Fed up with meetings? How to get it on someone's agenda

No one owns meetings, so if you’re frustrated, you might just need to take the initiative. I’ll show you how.

 

Hopefully, you’ve recovered from the last FrictionFree on how to have super difficult conversations. Not gonna lie, it was emotional!

Today, let's figure out how to get (changing) meeting culture on the radar.

 

I’m assuming that you want to get more from the precious time you invest in meetings - and probably have fewer meetings if possible.

You’re tired of so much talking in exchange for not enough clarity or action.

No more days of back-to-back meetings 🙏

Now...

You might just feel meetings could be sharpened.

Or could be you want to chuck your calendar in the bin and start again.

Perhaps you’ve seen my meetings work and feel your team or organisation should be doing something like this - but it’s hard to know how to even get that conversation on the table.

Now what?

I have two strategies you can use to kickstart a conversation about meetings in your own team or alternatively in a leadership team meeting to talk about alllll the meetings. There’s the short way and the long way.

 

The short way: ask them to just read this.

 

The long way goes a little like this: (and it's a good template for getting anything into the right people's consciousness)...

 

Step 1: Vibe check

Is anyone else having the same experience as you?

Put some feelers out. At this stage we’re not looking who is ready to something (and what that might be) but just whether they are experiencing any pain - or seeing any opportunity?

 

Ask:

“It feels like we are in a huge number of meetings at the moment. I know I am struggling to find enough focused time to do everything I’m committed to. Anyone else?”

Or:

“We have lots of meetings - I wonder if we might get more out of our time in them? Is anyone else thinking along the same lines?”

 

Great. Now you have a mandate to have a conversation.

  

Step 2: Have a proper conversation

Number one choice here is you get this on the agenda of a meeting for a discussion (either a session that’s already in the diary - or a new one if have to, but having a meeting about meetings can be an own goal!). Failing that, you could translate my conversation outline below for group chat.

Now, there is a big difference between people who Do Meetings Unto Others and people who have Meetings Done To Them. Take this recent conversation I had.

 

HR lead: Our meetings are pretty good.

HR exec: Our meetings are a DISASTER!

 

So here’s a session you can use to engage people who Do Meetings and may not realise the problem.

Here’s how I run these kind of sessions.

First, we’re going to widen things out to collaboration friction and overload, not just meetings. 

👋 Equalise voices

Get everyone contributing straight away and gauge the mood of the room.

Round question: Best and worst things about how we collaborate (ideally typed in a group chat box but could be aloud in the room/on the call)

 

📌 Set the scene 


Mandate: “I think there is massive scope to improve how we meet and collaborate and I’m hearing others do too.” 

Scope: “Today, we’re going to spend X minutes getting a sense of what the opportunity might be - and explore some themes you might not have thought of”

Purpose: “By the end, I’d like us to have a sense of the size of the opportunity and what we might do next” 

 

🙋🏽 Provoke thought part 1

Work through some questions as a provocation for discussion.

The aim is to create a burning platform. Here is a flow of questions you could draw from.

🤔 How much time do YOU spend in meetings? [Could ask people to bring a screenshot/printout of their calendar this week as a visual aid - and/or why now bring a sample of screenshots from others who share your vibes for an ah-ha moment].

🤔 What proportion of the time you spend meetings do you feel is truly moving your work forward?

🤔 How easy do you find it to get your ‘work-work’ done - the time you need to complete focused deep thinking and doing?

🤔 Meetings are clearly vital for the collaborative work we do. But why do you think we have quite so many? What is it about our culture and ways of working that means we end up spending so much of our time in meetings?

🤔 Do our meetings match for the culture we're aspiring to..?

 

🙋🏽 Provoke thought part 2

Share some or all of my Dear Leader, Just Read This slides that help to explain some of what they are experiencing. See what resonates.

 

🔥 Get a mandate

Ask straight up.

What do you think we should we do next?

Then come to me and let's talk tactics. I will help you any way I can.

 

This is all about sowing a seed. You're not trying to come up with a solution or plan a big project.

Get a conversation going. Build some allies. Generate some momentum. Use my Dear Leader, Just Read This slides however you want (and tell me how I can improve them for your audience).