How to Make Meetings Suck a Little Less

Stop wasting time with these five actionable steps.

Even as an entrepreneur, most meetings suck.

They’re part of any work-culture, no matter how small or large your company might be. Yet, most meetings are highly unproductive.

In an email to his staff, Elon Musk once wrote about meetings that they’re a “blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time.”

He advises his team to “walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it’s obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave; it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time”.

While most of us can’t simply walk out of meetings, we can be more respectful of each other’s time. Here are five simple yet effective steps to master any meeting.

Prepare an Agenda

Open every meeting with a clear plan. Before you dive into the talking points, state the purpose of your gathering.

Why are you meeting? What’s the desired outcome of this meeting?

“Give each other a status update” is too generic. Try to be as specific as possible, “sharing information to decide about customer acquisition channels.”

“It’s hard to come up with a bigger waste of money, time, or attention than status meetings.”

— Jason Fried

Knowing why you meet will increase your team’s motivation to contribute with their brainpower. When you have trouble defining the purpose of your meeting, remove it.

Once you know the meeting’s goal, provide a brief overview of all the topics the meeting will cover. If possible, hand out the list to everyone in the room and format your talking points with headlines and listicles. The essential items should be on top of your list.

Make sure there aren’t too many items on your list. Assign a time frame to each item and have a backup plan if your discussion takes more time.

In my team’s last meeting, I put “decide on communication tool for teamwork” on the list. I estimated 10 minutes for this discussion.

Yet, two co-workers held strong opinions about the different tools, and it became clear that we wouldn’t reach an agreement. At the same time, the other four team members involved were indifferent.

Instead of letting this discussion take up the entire meeting time, I asked the two for a brief get-together after the meeting.

Don’t put anything on the agenda that doesn’t concern the majority of the people in the room. If you have topics that only concern two, or three of you ask the people to show up some minutes earlier or stay later. Make a phone call to discuss it bi-directionally instead of taking away precious working time.

By preparing a cristal clear agenda with allocated time slots, you make meetings suck a little less.

Manage the Clock

We all know the feeling when you realize that the clock is passing by the allocated time, and there is no end in sight. If your meeting hasn’t sucked before, now it does.

There are two main reasons why meetings take longer than planned:

• A bad, or no, agenda
• No timekeeper

By managing the clock, you remind people when it’s time to move from one agenda point to the next. You’ll also sum up discussions and tell people how much time is left.

All you have to do is to keep the clock in mind. Put your clock next to your agenda. Make notes on the sides of your agenda at what time you want to be where.

When you’re meeting takes more time than expected, either transfer one item to the next meeting or ask people to keep their arguments short. By stating you want to finish the meeting on time, you’ll win your team’s sympathy.

Your team will love your meetings when you respect their time and close sessions within the preassigned time slot. Managing the clock shows both competence and professionalism.

Take Notes

Unless it’s written on paper, most of what you discussed will be useless. After your meeting, your team will continue working and forget whatever you discussed.

To make meetings productive and useful, always make notes. Don’t assign this important task to anybody else. Do it yourself. Even better, have everyone take notes. Note-taking is an art as you have to process the incoming information while listening.

I prefer writing down anything with my hands and then, after the meeting, typing my notes in a doc underneath the original agenda.

This two-step process allows me a) to recall and reflect on anything that has been said b) filter out the important from the unimportant stuff.

Your meeting protocol should only contain relevant information, including decisions (d), information (i), and action (a). With every action or to-do, there should be a person held responsible for it.

Hence when you write down something with (a) also include the person who’s responsible for doing it and until when it should be done.

Avoid fluffy sentences like “we should all focus on doing more of this.” This type of task assignment never works. When you address all, nobody feels responsible. Instead, assign clear responsibilities.

In your meetings, ask your employees, “Until when do you think you can do this?”. This way, you can hold them accountable without putting strict deadlines top down.

Empowering your people to determine deadlines by themselves is not only a great motivation but also gives you the option to drop a line later, make a call asking, “You said you would be done with this by tomorrow, are you on track? Is there anything I can help you with to get this done within the time frame you suggested?”.

Close the meeting with action steps

Most people leave a meeting feeling they wasted precious working time. You can avoid this feeling by closing your meeting strong.

Plan in three minutes to wrap up your meeting. In those final minutes, use your notes to summarize what has been discussed. This will give your teams a feeling of productivity and purpose.

First, repeat the goal of this meeting. State whether you’ve achieved, or partly achieved it. Then, go on with a brief overview of all decisions you’ve made and action items, together with responsibilities.

Promise that you will send the meeting protocol later in the day. Then, do it.

Hold Your Meeting Attendees Accountable

Nothing happens from discussions. Meetings only serve a purpose when they initiate smart actions.

To make things happen, people must do the work instead of talking about work.

A smart way to ensure your meeting decisions transform into action is to follow up 2–3 days after the meeting. Ask the responsible people whether they need help in completing their action items.

Open your next meeting with action items from your last protocol. Ask how that went. Follow through on your decisions.

Final Thoughts

Meetings suck less once everybody realizes they generate value. By showing your meeting decisions aren’t lost in space, you create a culture of accountability.

By having an agenda, managing the clock, taking notes, sending protocols, closing strong, and holding people accountable, your meetings will suck less.

This way, you improve how you work and communicate for everyone’s profit.

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