Comments on: Distracted Meetings?

By: Kevin Crenshaw

Kevin Crenshaw — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 16:54:00 +0000

We think it’s inevitable–meetings just have to be endured. But I routinely change meetings from boring to brilliant in under two weeks, and they stay that way. When people love to attend and participate, multitasking plummets naturally. Meetings like that change the company forever. The methods aren’t rocket science, but getting people to *believe* that change is possible is tough. We’ve become conditioned to bad meeting methods.

Wrong solutions:
– Pre-publishing an agenda (won’t make the meeting less boring and agile, it makes it worse–would you want to watch a new movie if you already knew the whole plot?)
– “Checking in” on the latest developments with each other
– Presentations from management or team members
– Consensus decisions or unilateral decisions (choose your poison)

A taste of the right solutions:
– Everyone brings “burning issues” and throws them on the table to hammer out together
– Build a just-in-time agenda at the start of the meeting (1 min.) based on what burning issues are most important to everyone
– Everyone’s opinions matter, anyone can weigh in
– Decisions are made via buy-in (70% agreement), not consensus
– Everyone takes the notes together, collaboratively, using a shared platform like Google Docs

By: Darcie

Darcie — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 15:54:28 +0000

Some important details here – only those who actually have something to contribute or learn should be in the meeting, the agenda should be pre-published, the purpose and owner of each agenda item should be crystal clear (and agreed upon ahead of time), and the meeting should end as soon as the agenda is completed. Then folks will likely be more willing to park their devices. Hopefully all of that would come up in the open & honest discussion, but I’ve found that part of the reason people multi-task is that they aren’t engaged by the meeting and maybe they don’t need to be there. Give them permission to leave when their agenda item is done and part of the problem disappears.

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 14:38:58 +0000

I know one company that inadvertently stopped this. They converted an EM test room to a conference room. The room is shielded from outside signals, so none of the electronics work.

By: Wietze de Vries

Wietze de Vries — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:42:39 +0000

Right on! Thanks for the tips on how to make this problem “discussable”.