Focused Meetings

Early in my management career my meetings ran long and were unfocused.

We would solution problems immediately and I struggled to know what work was being done.

I needed to engineer a system for meetings, but start participating like a manager.

So I created a simple three piece framework to get my meetings back on track:

1. Create an agenda.
2. Drive the conversation.
3. Ask for individual feedback.

Meetings start with a clear agenda, what do we need to discuss and why.

I always have a list of action items that need to be fleshed out during the meeting.

If you don’t have defined action items, you don’t need to meet.

You need to be ruthless with side-chatter, and drive the conversation in a focused manner.

Engineers are notorious for starting to solution a problem immediately. Seemingly good for getting things done, bad for meeting length.

Your team will appreciate your course corrections.

As the meeting closes, I no longer ask for feedback from the group, instead ask each participant individually.

Depending on personality types and the number of people on the call it can be very easy miss valuable feedback when simply asking the group.