What kind of meetings are there
There are many types of working meetings: daily rallies, stand-ups, brainstorming sessions, retrospectives, SCRUM ceremonies. All of them can be combined into three large groups - depending on the purpose.
Informative meetings
Those on which the organizers tell the participants some information. Usually, a lot of people are invited to such meetings to tell about any news or innovations. For example, to inform that a feedback process has appeared in the company.
Discussion Meetings
Those on which participants think how to solve a problem or question and share their ideas. For example, they discuss which new feature to add to the application.
Decision Making Meetings
Those on which participants need to come to a common decision. For example, select a task tracker that the entire team will use.
Often the same meeting combines elements of information, discussion and decision-making. In one rally, the team leader can tell the team about the new requirements of the customer, discuss their implementation with the developers and together decide who will do what.
What meetings can I refuse
During the meeting, employees do not carry out their work duties and, therefore, do not bring the company profit. Here is an online counter with which you can calculate how much money the company "loses" at each rally. This is the so-called “meeting cost”. You need to enter the number of participants, their average salary per hour of work, and start the counter when the meeting begins.
Before making an appointment, the organizer needs to understand whether it is really needed. There are several types of meetings you can opt out of.
Broad Agenda Meetings
These are meetings devoted to a wide range of issues from various fields. They are ineffective because at a different time a certain number of people participate in the discussion, and the rest are waiting in line, spending work time.
What to do? First, understand how many questions you want to raise at the rally. Then - instead of one long meeting, plan a few short ones and invite only interested participants to each.
Speeches by several departments to management
Usually these are meetings at which departments take turns reporting to the general manager about the results of work for the month. It looks like a series of reports in front of the general - one says, and everyone else is standing at attention and listening.
What to do? Replace such meetings with a series of short meetings with each team, and then send out a general letter with the most important information on the results of each department.
Informative meetings
These are meetings at which company management delivers information to employees. In general, there is nothing wrong with them if the news is really important and concerns everyone. However, gathering a large number of people at one time is almost impossible. This means that information will not reach any of the employees.
What to do? First of all, send news to employees by mail, and then make an appointment for the Q & A session. So people will have the opportunity to study the information at a time convenient for them and think about the questions, rather than formulate them in a hurry during the meeting.
Meetings for making strategic decisions with a large number of participants
Here we are talking about those meetings at which you need to make some kind of top-level decision. The problem with such rallies is that they invite people who cannot directly participate in the decision-making process. For example, a meeting at which the project manager and architect calculate how much it will cost the customer to introduce a new module into the system, and the developers just sit and are silent.
What to do? To invite to the rally only those participants who can really influence the decision-making.
Regular Team Meetings
Meetings at which each team member talks about what he is working on and what tasks he plans to deal with in the near future. Keeping abreast of the work team is not bad. The problem is that sometimes we hold such meetings, because it is customary for the company, the methodology so prescribes, it is written in a smart book, and not because there is a real need for them.
What to do? Schedule each meeting as necessary - if there are topics that really need to be discussed by the whole team.
How to organize and conduct an effective meeting
An effective meeting is one that benefits all of its participants, and also - ideally - a project or company. Each participant in the rally must understand why he was invited, how he can be useful and what he will get at the exit.
To make any meeting as effective as possible, you need to:
- formulate the topic, plan and purpose of the meeting
The organizer needs to give the participants as much information as possible about the meeting at the start. To do this, you need to formulate the topic of the meeting as clearly as possible, write down a list of topics and questions that you are going to raise and what results you plan to achieve.
- give participants the opportunity to influence the meeting plan
In an invitation to a meeting, it is advisable for the organizer to ask the participants: “Do you agree with the meeting plan? Do you need to change it somehow? Are there any other questions you want to discuss? ” This helps the initiator of the meeting to collect feedback before the meeting, as well as adjust the plan, taking into account the wishes and needs of the participants.
For example, a project manager wants to talk about implementing new functionality with a project team. And developers, for their part, can offer to discuss the shortcomings of the existing application architecture, which can affect the operation of this functionality.
- give participants time to prepare
Preparing for a rally is a very important thing. Often the meetings are ineffective simply because the participants did not have time to comprehend, process and structure the information they are expected to receive.
Meetings-discussions and meetings for decision-making are better to appoint in one to two weeks. Meetings for information - in one to two business days, so that participants can plan and distribute their load in the near future. However, this is not an axiom - each rally must be approached individually.
- define a clear time frame
It is worth striving to ensure that the meeting takes up the minimum amount of time necessary to achieve its goal. Ideally, it should not last more than 45 minutes. That is how much time we can perceive and assimilate information qualitatively. At the 90th minute, our focus of attention is greatly weakened, and after two hours of the meeting we get so tired that we are ready to agree to any decisions if only to complete the meeting as soon as possible.
- appoint a moderator
To set the agenda for the meeting is half the battle. For a meeting to be truly effective, it must be followed. To do this, you need a person who will control the progress of the meeting. The moderator can be both the organizer of the rally, and one of the participants.
Without a moderator, any rally risks becoming a bazaar. Participants can start arguing, switch to other topics, and prevent others from speaking out. The moderator needs to make sure that the participants during the meeting have time to discuss all the topics prescribed in the plan. One can hear such phrases from him: “We deviated from the topic”, “This is a very broad question, let's discuss it at a separate meeting”, “We pass the word ...”.
- choose a secretary
The secretary is needed to record decisions made, agreements, ideas and other important points of the meeting. If this information is not recorded anywhere, we can assume that the decisions have not been taken, the agreements are not fixed, and the meeting was a waste of time.
After the meeting, the secretary sends all participants a so-called follow-up letter with the results of the rally. Any member can take on the role of secretary.
- collect feedback
Asking participants for feedback is a very good idea. This can be done in the last five minutes of the meeting. If you are an organizer, ask the participants: “Did this meeting seem effective to you? How could it be improved? ”
Meetings need to be regarded as tools for working interaction. And it’s important and necessary to improve the tools that we use.