by John J. Walters

I stumbled across this humorous image about meetings as I was scouring the web for seed ideas for this week’s blog post, and it reminded me of why we started this site in the first place.  Simply put: meetings suck.  But they don’t have to.  Most people regard meetings as pointless wastes of time, and in many cases they’re right to do so.

The idea of paying employees to sit through weekly (sometimes daily) meetings that can only be described as “complete wastes of time” must make most business owners cringe.  But if they’re all bad, then why don’t we abolish meetings entirely?

Meetings are an unfortunate reality of life in the business world, but they certainly don’t have to be as bad as they are.  We have emails, phone calls, and text messages to keep employees updated.  We have services like PBworks (which MeetingCaptain syncs with, incidentally) to allow coworkers to facilitate collaboration without anyone being in the same room.  Most people resent the technological leash that businesses are using these days, but I’m sure they would resent it a lot less if it meant a massive reduction in the number and length of pointless meetings they are required to attend.

True, some things need to be hashed out in a group setting.  When my team was working together on the first draft of our book, our weekly meetings were essential to keeping the project rolling and maintaining a high quality of work.  The idea that we would all have to justify our work to each other on a weekly basis provided a healthy atmosphere of competition and accountability.  In fact, we often found ourselves going over the allotted time because we had so much to accomplish.

If I wanted to keep the meeting to a manageable length, I found that I sometimes had to shortchange my own work even though I was the team lead and project manager.  Then I realized that if I didn’t want to cut work time, I had to make an effort to cut the seemingly obligatory logistics update at the beginning of the meeting.  How did I do this?  By making good use of technology.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have MeetingCaptain or PBworks to help me back then.  Instead of adding everyone to one online workspace and using that to store the latest files and communicate important updates I had to send a lot of emails and keep painstaking account of each and every draft.  It required a lot of preparation, but it also allowed me to keep the meetings shorter than two hours.  It also placed the burden almost entirely on me to make sure we had a good meeting, even though I was only one of the seven participants.

Running a good meeting requires a lot of strategizing and coordinating.  That’s a fact.  But if you can take care of the first part, then technology can take care of the second.

by John J. Walters

It’s okay.  Everyone does it from time to time.  It usually happens when you are talking about some topic that you care about more passionately than the conversation’s other participants, like that time you did that thing in that place with those people.  It gets even harder to be interesting in a business setting, when all the dirty jokes and crazy stories are off limits.

The tricky part is, sometimes we have to impart some information that is not interesting in the least.  This is a sad fact of life in the business world, and one that is not likely to change no matter how slick our technology may get.  Even when we have those holographic briefing centers from science fiction films, it will still be hard to keep people interested in a presentation on TPS reports.

So what to do?  First of all, you need to know when you are being a bit of a bore.  There’s lots of ways to tell this, from body language and averted glances to a lack of participation.  Sometimes just the awareness that you’re boring the other parties is enough to make you change your tune.  Ask some more questions, try to wrap things up faster, or toss a joke in there from time to time.  Don’t get frustrated but learn from your experience being the (boring) center of a meeting.  Work to improve.

The other piece of the puzzle is to consider carefully what the best mode of presentation might be for the particular information that you need to convey.  PowerPoint might be the preferred option, but it’s not really suited to every type of lecture.  Indeed, not everything needs to be a lecture.  If you need to teach people something, then make an effort to include some interaction.  If you need them to listen carefully to a lot of details that you know they won’t remember, give them a brief overview verbally and then distribute a handout that they can consult only when they need it.  Be creative.

Think about one of your favorite professors from back in your college days (or teachers from your high-school days).  What made their classes more interesting?  It might have been the subject material, but more than likely they were also an interesting orator who varied their style regularly and encouraged participation.  These aren’t just good ideas for teachers — we can use them quite effectively during business meetings if we’re willing to practice and pay attention to our audience.