Meetings are one of the most time-consuming and costly activities in which we engage. How many times have you attended a meeting that was suppose to last 30 minutes, but you did not leave until 2 hours later? As an Executive or Manager, calculate how much money you are paying each individual in the room for that 1.5 hours of wasted time. How many times per week does this occur? As the individual trapped in this meeting, how often do you work overtime? Would an extra 1.5 hours during the day help you get home to your family earlier? As the meeting facilitator, do people hate coming to your meetings? Consider how great it would feel if someone slapped you on the back afterward and said, “This was a great meeting!”

Let’s look more closely at time and money spent in a meeting. Consider a 1 hour meeting with 8 attendees. It only lasts an hour, so what is the big deal, right? Wrong. The meeting itself may only last 1 hour, but 8 hours of total time were consumed: 1 hour per person. That is the equivalent of a full work-day of one person’s time! As an individual in the meeting, perhaps you do not care, but to a Manager this should matter; you have just paid for 8 hours spent in one meeting. Did you get 8 hours worth of value for the company’s money?
Here are some very simple guidelines to follow that will make your meetings more productive and less time-consuming.

Create an Agenda

The agenda serves three purposes: 1) it helps you clarify what you want to get out of the meeting; 2) it lets attendees know what to expect so they can show up mentally prepared; and 3) it helps you keep the meeting on track and ensure the results for which you are looking.

A good agenda will include at a minimum the purpose for the meeting, the list of topics to be covered, and the timeframe allotted for each topic.
The meeting facilitator (or person who is calling the meeting) should always create an agenda and send it to the meeting attendees in advance of the meeting. If this is an emergency meeting, get to the room and put an agenda on the white board.

Assign Meeting Roles

In order to run an efficient meeting, you need a facilitator, a timekeeper, and a recorder (a person, not a recording device). It is possible to have one person take all three roles, but delegation to three different individuals will allow the role-takers to participate in the meeting discussion more fully.

The facilitator runs the meeting and ensures all topics are covered according to the timeframes allocated in the agenda. The timekeeper tracks time per topic as an aid to the facilitator and to keep the attendees informed. The recorder notes key decisions and action items that need follow-up after the meeting or to be formally documented for later reference.

Keep Discussion on Track and on Time

The hardest part about running an efficient meeting is keeping the discussion focused on the topic at hand and within the time allocated. Consider the following in facilitating your meeting or “helping” an ineffective facilitator gain control of a meeting.

First, understand that this is a business meeting, not a social. If you want attendees to socialize, then schedule a social. If you and your meeting attendees clearly understand this, then you do not have to feel “guilty” or “mean” by interrupting people to move the meeting along.

Here are the steps to follow when time is up but conversation on the topic is not, or conversation goes off-topic:

1. Interrupt the conversation (nicely) and remind everyone that you need to get back to the agenda. You may reference time or topic; whichever is pertinent.
2. Either agree to a time/place that the conversation you just interrupted will be picked back up and have the recorder note the decision, or simply ask the parties involved to address it themselves later.
3. Guide attendees back to the topic at hand or on to the next topic.

Clearly Assign Action Items

In most meetings, issues or things-to-do (we will call these action items) will surface that need to be addressed outside the meeting. For example, perhaps a document needs to be sent to a particular customer. If you ask the recorder to note this but you neglect to note who will send the document and by when, chances are high that the document will never be sent.
For any action item identified:

• Record the action item.
• Record who will address the action item.
• Record the date by which the action item will be completed.
• If the person is attending the meeting, ask him/her to confirm that he/she agrees and will do it.
• If the person is not in the meeting, ask the recorder to get confirmation after the meeting that the person will address it.

The more specific you are, the less likely you will have to re-visit an issue later.

Recap Key Decisions and Action Items

This is the part that is easiest to skip and if I am honest, I often do. However, I usually regret it because inevitably something will be mis-recorded or missing altogether.

It only takes a minute or two and may save you some headaches or repetitive discussion later: before adjourning the meeting, ask the recorder to read the key decisions and action items back to the group to make sure everyone agrees it is complete and accurate.

Enjoy the Time You Saved!

Now everyone can figure out what to do with all that extra time saved by your efficiently run meeting. Hopefully, it will not be to attend someone else’s inefficiently run meeting.