Meetings have a well-deserved reputation for being wastes of time and a burden.  Imagine flipping them from drains on your time to benefits to your project!  The steps are simple, but require discipline and a period of eduction for all the team members. 

Realize meetings are productivity tools.  By assembling a group of people, you can communicate a great deal of information to a many people very quickly.  You can tap many perspectives and resources and experiences and talents.  You can build consensus among team members.  You can make decisions and plans to take action outside the meeting.

Here are the steps you can follow to achieve productive meetings:

1. Start and end on time and stick to your schedule.  This shows you are serious about time.

2. Always have an agenda.  Have detailed goals and allocate time to each of them.  The agenda should be in priority order, from the most important to the least.  This way you will accomplish the most important goals first.  Any agenda items not covered are deferred to the next meeting.  Plan the next meetings agenda at the end of each meeting.

3. Always plan for the minimum amount of time for each item.  You want your attendees to have a sense of urgency during the meeting. You, as meeting facilitator, must also have this sense of urgency and communicate to the team members. If you need more time, drop one of the later items, with agreement of the participants. 

4. Always record every action item and every decision.  It's amazing how often the same issues arise; why make the same decision twice?  Why have the same argument twice?  Record the pro's and con's of the various sides and make a team decision; then stick to it.  If new information arises or a new decision criterion, you can revisit the old decision with the new facts.

5. Never remove an action item until it is complete. This shows the responsible party and all participants what your standards for completion are.

6. Always review every action item.  This makes the participants realize you're serious about getting it done.

7. Assign action items to the best person via questions:  Can you do this?  Can you get this done by next week?  Can you get it done by tomorrow?  What resources do you need?  What can the rest of the team do to help your productivity?  Make sure you communicate it is the person's responsibility to complete the activity and get their commitment to do so.  Make sure the team understands the meetings are for communication and decisions; the action items get done in between meetings.

8. Assign action items to people who are not present--they need to realize their responsibility to the team does not end because they do not attend.

9. As project manager, take responsibility--take action items, complete them, accept correction yourself.  This will encourage others to work as hard as your do and they will accept your standards if you follow them.

10. Plan for some slack time at the start of the meeting.  Start your meeting at five minutes after the hour or half hour.  This gives people time to travel from one meeting to another.  It is good to engage people as they enter the room in light conversation and warm up your team for the official meeting time.

Not all of these rules will be easy to follow, but all of them produce good results.

Jeffry J. Smith

MBA, PMP, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, and I will be teaching the Essentials Course #E300, Introduction to Project Time Management