Finding What Works: Meetings

Originally posted on www.cnmsocal.org.

It’s no secret at CNM that I hate meetings. So, when I came across this Harvard Business Review article about making meetings more productive, I read it with abandon and then immediately forwarded it to everyone in the office.

At our weekly staff meetings we would gather together for about 90 minutes and talk about what everyone was up to. It was all nice-to-know information, but not need-to-know. Ain’t nobody got time for nice-to-know these days! I wanted to get important information and action items out of our time together.

Our very supportive CEO, Regina, was interested in “saving time, being more productive, and trying something new,” so I was given the greenlight to move ahead with a new structure for our meetings.

Our new 60-minute schedule looks like this:

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1. Welcome – 1 or 2 minutes
This is the obligatory, “Hi! Welcome. Now sit down and be quiet because we’re about to start.” This is also a good time to welcome any new staff members, interns, volunteers, or guests.

2. Help Needed or Need-To-Knows – 8 – 10 minutes
This time is used to call out any updates that are especially important or to ask for help from the entire staff.

We gather all the “nice-to-know” updates and distribute them ahead of time. Yes, I’d like to know when our consulting department has a new project, but I don’t really need to hear everyone’s questions about it when it isn’t really moving anything forward. Now, we still let people know what’s going on, but we don’t take any face-to-face time on it, and when people have questions, they are encouraged to follow up with department heads individually.

3. Education – 10 minutes
CNM strongly believes in the power of professional development, so we are often out learning new things from a training, conference, webinar, or meeting. We take a few minutes for staff members to share their takeaways from these events.

4. Workshop – 40 minutes
This is where we actually get stuff done. Lately we have been working as a whole to accomplish some of our strategic goals. It’s really great to have the entire staff working together and to have this designated time to move things forward.

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One very important aspect of this is gathering information ahead of time. This allows everyone to prepare information and presentations.

The model is still new and might undergo some tweaks over time, but it has been extremely helpful in making our meetings more exciting, participatory, and useful.

What methods have you tried to make your meetings more productive and less boring?