“You can often get 80% of the way there in two minutes…”

A mentor recently shared this with me and I’ve seen it in action more than once in the last few weeks as groups I’ve been a part of, and observed, choose to get started instead of talking about it.

Simply taking two minutes to write a draft statement, diagram a timeline or sketch a design will often get you 80% of the way there and provide a great starting point.

I have seen so many groups flounder because they lack concrete options to evaluate, discuss or debate. It might only take two minutes to get you most of the way there!

How have you seen this in action?

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The past 2 days were one of the most productive meetings that I have attended for some time.  Part of it was because some of us have read some principles from the Modern Meeting.  Here are 3 points on why I think it was a successful time.
1) The leader had a decision that we could discuss and implement.  Modern meetings are more effective when a decision is the starting point to either debate or implement.   Instead of spending hours brainstorming and evaluating different decisions, a decision was made and the team had something to refine, debate, and/or implement.
2) We had group work sessionsInstead of attacking an issue with the whole team, the leader split the group into group work sessions.  It was not a "meeting" but a time where team members were "making hay" (i.e. getting work done) along side each other.  As a result we had a plan and action points to present and confirm in the next block of meetings.
3) We had a distinct time for brainstormAlthough usually recommended for...

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I’ve recently journeyed with a group of 12 leaders transitioning from a model of meeting over conference calls, to meeting over Skype.

Here a few learnings.

• Group Chat – It’s very powerful that anybody can say anything at any time without interrupting the main conversation.  This can range from something as simple as “I agree with Tony’s point” to “@melinda, please go on mute” to “I have some reservations about this, could I have a chance to push back?”  This allows for engagement of the entire group without high overhead and actually helps me pay better attention.
• Private Chat – I’ve found I’m frequently dialoguing privately with other team members on the call.  It might be a point of encouragement, a point of clarification or help with a technical issue or pointing them to some supporting information or documents.  This is really efficient because we don’t have to send emails outside the meeting or meet separately but instead can efficiently collaborate during the ebb and flow of the main meeting....

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==1. Everyone has real-time read/write access to the notes.

It’s likely useful to appoint one person to do the main note-taking, however, the entire group can help massage the notes and provide relevant formatting, word-smithing, additional information etc…  This means that as the meeting progresses everyone has an awareness of what is being captured.

==2. Everyone has access to a [centralized] shared repository of all documents of all of the group’s ongoing work.

The repository includes all resources from previous meetings.  Resources from the current meeting are added in real-time to the repository.  Ideally, any resources for the current meeting have already been put in the repository prior to the meeting, allowing participants to prepare ahead of time.

==3. Action points are recorded in real-time.

It is clear at the end of the meeting what needs to be done because everyone has already seen the notes evolving, (implicitly validating them) and knows what needs to get done.  As action points are ass...

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Do you ever go back and read the minutes from meetings?  I’ll be honest, I don’t.

It was refreshing to attend a meeting this week where the focus was not to record the specifics of every discussion, but rather to focus on capturing the next steps and action points.

Minutes might be useful for those who couldn’t attend a meeting, but I think putting energy into making sure next steps are captured is a much more valuable investment of resources.

I might reference the minutes from a meeting, and if I do, I’m usually looking from an ego-centric perspective a few days before the next meeting, frantically searching for what tasks were assigned to me.

A key part of every meeting needs to be answering the question, “how will we do what we just said we will do?”  After a meeting, does each person walk away with a clear list of what they will do by when and know that someone will be knocking at the door if they don’t?

Agree?  Disagree?

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