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My three go-to meeting formats, whatever team or project I'm leading (before, during and after guide for each)
As leaders and managers, we are not short of meetings. We are sometimes, however, short of progress (or clarity, or solutions to tricky problems...). We’ve inherited a system that defaults to calls, catch-ups and never-ending calendar blocks.
There are the three meeting formats that I think work really hard for anyone leading a team or project.
Treat each of these as a provocation - what could you use from the principles and techniques at play that will solve the three critical project challenges?
1. Cutting through ambiguity
2. Getting decisions made
3. Handling conflict
You will quickly spot that these sessions have structure and require some positioning ("This is an experiment designed to help us XYZ - let's try it for four meetings and then review"), some discipline ("I'm going to limit us to 2 minutes each for this so that we can get the most out of our time" *sets phone timer) and some practice ("We'll try it today and aim to improve on XYZ next week").
Changing meetings by introducing new formats is not easy! But it is a central tenet of faster, more inclusive and useful meetings. Remember, you are the judge of what will help most, what your team is ready for and how to position it for them.
Meeting #1: The ultimate update meeting
Purpose: Maintain alignment, surface risks and fix obvious problems quickly
Principles:
- All info is shared beforehand (into a shared doc or a Teams chat thread). Participants read and come prepared with questions or concerns.
- In the first part of the meeting, key issues are surfaced quickly.
- The second part is a deep dive into 1-3 of these issues to problem solve together (or escalate)
Structure:
BEFORE: information is shared beforehand in a shared doc or a Teams chat thread - using a specific format / constraint to make information easy to create and consume e.g. adding bullets under four headings: Just Done, Next Priority, Concerns, Heads Up (no action, just FYI)
DURING
-
Rounds: Each person raises concerns that need group resolution. You design how this should work based on the content and the way the project is set up. Examples include:
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Top concerns that need resolution from your own area/project
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Top concerns across all the areas/projects, based on what you've read
- Filtering: agree 1-3 concerns to deep dive resolve in this session (and filter any others for 2-way conversations offline or for escalation to another team/stakeholder). Could dot vote or just agree it, depending on how many attendees and how obvious the priority items are.
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Deep dive: Divide the remaining time into 1-3 sections to give you a timebox for each of agreed concerns.
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Capture: Use the Capture Canvas (Decisions, Actions, Car Park, Heads Up) to capture real time
AFTER: Share the Capture Canvas as transparently as possible with relevant stakeholders and those meaningfully affected by the work.
Meeting #2: Highly effective problem solving session
We have meetings to solve problems all the time - usually by a different name. There is an 'issue' to 'discuss' and the conversation that ensues is often an unrewarding process that spawns two more meetings! Here's how to change that. You can also use this as a format within a larger meeting. It looks like a lot of steps but with practice, they become very efficient allowing you to cover huge ground, with wide ranging expert input very quickly - a must learn skill for every project team!
Purpose: Figure out the best way to address a problem, issue or concern.
Principles:
- Separate out talking about the problem vs exploring solutions vs making a decision so the conversation doesn't get frustrating and circular
- Create some structure around these key phases to allow people to contribute more usefully and succinctly
Structure:
- Gain a shared understanding of the problem: Use real data and insights and invite clarifying questions. The output of this section is to create a problem statement - an agreed summary of the issue that must be tackled.
- Formation of “How might we…” question or questions: Create a solution focused question that starts with 'How Might We...' which orients the group around the solution they are looking for. Establish any constraints e.g. time, money, specification that they will work to.
- Generate options through brainwriting first: Give people time to think about ideas and options and to note them down, before they are discussed out loud.
- Evaluate options by collecting data about how people feel about each option (e.g. dot voting, heart voting, $100 voting or using Fist To Five) without premature decision-making.
AFTER: Share the problem statement, the How Might We question(s), the options (including the data) and any decision or proposed decision as transparently as possible with those meaningfully affected by the problem.
Meeting #3: Learning loop
This is the FewerFasterBolder take on the Agile retrospective session (which is difficult to improve on but here goes!)...
Purpose: Work ON the project as a group (not just IN the project)
Principles:
- Deliberately improve the way the team works on the project as a group practice.
- Surface learnings in a safe place so the team can gain from experiments and straight up mistakes.
- Provide a place where frustrations and 'energy' can be handled safely and usefully.
Structure:
Pose three questions and give people time to think and silently jot down thoughts in a shared doc or in a thread in the channel.
1. What are you most proud of since we last did a Learning Loop (or in the last month)?
2. What is one thing you think we MUST focus on now as a team?
3. What is concerning you, if anything, that we haven't properly addressed.
Work through these questions, capturing outcomes in three columns:
- Decisions
- Actions
- Learnings
Now I'm curious - what meetings formats could you not live without? |
With my best wishes as always 👋