Sounds straight forward, right?
You’ll soon find that governance and bureaucracy stems from chaos, and is to some extent the solution. It’s the chicken and the egg again…
Bringing Order to Chaos
What I mean by that is that the reason the pendulum swings so far and becomes so unreasonably beaurocratic, seems to be because it originates from the disorder of staff, decision making, and communication on the lead up to the final decision that: now we need to do something drastic and radical about the state of affairs we’ve caused and have a meeting about it!
This might seem cynical, but it is often the case, and one way to resolve it is by identifying ways to clearly communicate at the top levels and cascade information and work packages clearly and concisely. One of these is to hold a structured meeting, and that’s what we’re talking about here.
Having a Chair (or Senior Nominee/Decision maker)
Essentially you need someone who can moderate and steer the board, panel, or meeting membership and keep them on track. You need to be able to tell people when they are off track, call out inappropriate or off topic themes, and be familiar with the project scope so you can reframe discussions with focus. You will also need to keep the meeting on track so that all the information can be covered in time.
How Long is a piece of String?
How long? Choose realistic meeting timelines depends on the depth of the discussion. I know people who do 15 minute meetings, and others who do 60 minutes and still don’t get to the bottom of things. Others where it starts 20 minutes late because there’s no expectation or consequence to it, and theres more to that than timing of course, but things still tick along either way. Why? because the nature of meetings is to instigate some kind of progress or understanding, and even if you don’t have the meeting things will continue to run as they did really, just no progress, and so wouldn’t matter if the meeting occurred either way!
Theres no clearcut answer for how long a meeting should be really, and depends on how many people and the topics discussed.
That said, as a general rule of thumb though, I usually go with:
- <20 mins is more rapport building, quick coffee and catch up, brief updates, a 121 catch up, quick highlights.
- <45 minutes is generally enough to cover most topics and come to an agreement about basic actions forward.
- 60 minutes is the discussion with follow up questions
- <120 minutes multiple stakeholders, lots of discussion needed around dependencies and teams or department involvements
- >120 minutes is a working group team building, collective problem solving, team day (usually with some kind of food and drink, and in a nice think-tank building if you’re lucky).
Preparing or Serving the Meeting/Committee
Sometimes meetings can descend into chaos when there aren’t clear expectations of what the meeting is about. This doesn’t always need to be formalised in the sense of an agenda and submission of documents 1-2 weeks in advance, it can take shape as a quick-fire agenda and scoping sentence or short paragraph which frames the intent and outcomes of the meeting.
Collaborative Cloud Space
If it is a more substantial meeting, create a shared folder to drop things in and drill it in each meeting to use that area. It will become a good record of compliance, and you’ll store all your minutes, agendas, supporting docs in there.
A Reference Point
What happened on the lead up to the meeting? How d you open? The membership needs some context about what the meeting is for and quick summary of key info and actions leading up to it, probably some indication of the outcome too unless it is for reporting and discussion. In the case of the latter, it (should be) more obvious that everyone invited is there to share their updates so that others can use that information to develop and adapt their outputs, update their teams, or collaborate more closely.
A Minute Taker or Secretary
Ask a secretary if they can support this to minute the meeting and record actions, deadlines, next meetings, any dependencies or key information and who is responsible.
If no one is available to minute or record, you can create minutes based on actions. This means that after a discussion decision has been made or a way forward, note this, and then who is responsible to see it through, and when by.
The Right People in the Room
It’s the person who called the meeting’s responsibility to who should, could, or can contribute in a meeting. That can be quite challenging at times, especially when people who should be contributing; don’t, or equally when people that shouldn’t; do.
Generally there are a few reasons for this and why meetings get derailed, shut down, or ignored.
- If it is definitely someones responsibility i.e. through seniority, they should be invited anyway. Regardless of disposition, they may contribute or block decisions, but that is the nature of calling a meeting.
- If someone doesn’t feel it is important, or that it is not their responsibility, they’re generally not the people you want to be in the room. But sometimes you need to ensure they are there anyway to ensure they have voice in decisions that will impact them or their team.
- When there are larger problems at play and the people in the meeting think that something else should be a priority, then make the initial topic about something else.
- Te chair doesn’t steer the meeting, manage boundaries and scope of discussions, or have interest to develop this area of work.
- Meetings can be quite daunting, or intimidating if you are not used to that way of working. It can be threatening and there are times where participants might become defensive of their work or ways of working, or equally aggressive. This is often when there is something to hide or they are not aware or are actively choosing to do something a different way, or not at all!
Give A Summary of Decisions and Actions
At the end of it all the Chair, nominee, or failing that; you! need to summarise the actions and next steps. Give a sense of ownership and responsibility, and make it clear. Give an opportunity for any Q&A follow up and signpost to the people who have contributed to the action decision for outside of the meeting once it’s closed.
Minutes or Email Follow up
Make sure to keep your project log and email comms up to date. After the meeting share the minutes or ask the secretary to do so. Ifthe meeting was intense and you only made a few scribbled actions, just follow it up with an email to confirm that the decision was made or that we’ll touch base on the next meeting about X,Y,Z.
Deadlines and Next Meeting
Along with the minutes and actions section, make sure you’ve agreed a timeline or date for any actions, and then if there is a follow up meeting, try to agree this too. If you cant get a firm yes from everyone, let them know you’re going to pencil something in the calendar for same time in 2 weeks and we’ll circle back. If theres any issue with it they can propose a new time, or failing that they might be one of the people i introduced in the first paragraph!
TLDR
As there is a directive from these kinds of meeting communications, it can often translate to very simple work packages that are communicated via email and can become a project log when stored efficiently.
If you are creating a meeting, you are the owner, you create the structure (or chaos) of your meeting.
Involve the right people and don’t let anyone who is not ea stakeholder draw the energy to something else, keepm on track.
After the meeting summarise actions, for your memory, and to keep the people who ned to do it accountable. Call back to this later.
If you have support, minute the meeting or folllow up directly with an email, then do your actions!
See out Project Management minutes and other templates for download.
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