By Meeting Magic, the meeting facilitation specialists.
Many planning meetings can be frustrating and unproductive.
But, according to Meeting Magic, specialists in facilitating productive meetings, they need not be that way.
“Planning meetings suffer from the common problems faced in meetings, such as dominant characters taking up all the air time and not sticking to the agenda,” says Katherine Woods of Meeting Magic.
Katherine Woods
“But they also have their own special challenges. They often involve multifunctional groups, coming into the meeting with different perspectives about what’s needed. This can add to the challenge of group decision making.”
Katherine offers the following tips to make planning meetings more productive:
- Be clear about what you want to achieve in the meeting and be as specific as possible. In particular be clear about what level of detail needs to be agreed in the meeting – eg, is it enough to agree the broad objectives? Can you leave the plans for how they will be achieved to the individuals concerned? Or do you need to agree top-level projects and leave the detailed tactics for outside the meeting?
- It is also important to be clear about the decisions that need to be agreed in the meeting. This should inform who needs to be there.
- Choose the best time and place for the meeting to ensure attendance by key decision makers.
- Deciding on how decisions will be made in advance of the meeting is critical. Do you want to co-create the plan from scratch? Do you want to test a draft plan? Do you want to consult with the group prior to developing the plan or do you want to tell everyone what the plan is?
- Make sure you accurately document all decisions taken in the meeting in real time so people can see what they’re agreeing to. This documentation can then be circulated after the meeting to reinforce agreements and track actions.
To find out more about making your meetings productive, Meeting Magic has published a book called Meeting Magic: a practical guide for managers who want to make their meetings productive, by Katherine Woods and Ingrid Uden. It is available from major UK book suppliers and online from amazon.co.uk and meetingmagic.co.uk.
