Managing the meeting process
Managing the meeting process
Responsibility
As the person responsible for running the meeting efficiently there are some key areas to consider.
After all, time is valuable and the quicker you can solve a problem the better.
However, the aim isn’t just to run the meetings as fast as possible so that you can leave early.
Essentially, you have a responsibility to arrive at a solution to your problem that meets particular criteria.
These could, for example be:
- Meet needs for low cost
- Easy to implement
- Sustainable
- No knock on effects to other projects etc.
You are trying to achieve all of this while keeping everyone enthused and not wasting the time of individuals.
It’s a tough job that may be honed with practice.
Generate energy
It will be up to you to generate the energy within the group to make the exercise a success.
When ideas are raised get the opinion of others, either when clarifying their content or reviewing them.
If the process is stalling find ways to reignite the enthusiasm.
Take the germ of an idea and encourage its development.
During the review put a spoke in the works with an outlandish thought.
This will have two effects. Firstly, it may generate better ideas.
Secondly, it will show that ‘daft’ ideas and different ways of thinking are acceptable and encouraged.
Also, make sure the purpose of the meeting is clear and explain the rules as shown previously (The meeting process).
A novel method of getting a lot of ideas is to use computers or mobile phones to link ideas via some sort of chat software.
This has many advantages:
- People can contribute ideas easily without having to wait for others to finish.
- By using an alter ego you can contribute ideas anonymously.
- It’s an interesting technique that many will be enthusiastic to have a go at.
This may be useful in generating many ideas but may prove tricky in making them visible to all.
This can cause issues during collation and review of the ideas.
Another aspect of this technique is to consider it during the review process.
If you are trying to clarify ideas, you might need to get input from the author, who up to this point in time has been anonymous.
You might wish to carry out this technique for a period of time on the basis that all alter egos will be revealed.
Discuss this up front with the group.
Recording the ideas
This seems easy doesn’t it.
You might not feel involved in the ideas creation process if all you are doing is writing them down.
However, there can be no short cuts in doing this. Someone has to be the scribe.
It is a vital part of the meeting management that the rules for doing this are explained carefully.
Make sure that all the ideas are recorded absolutely accurately with no short cut phrases.
Keep an eye on this process and intervene before it gets out of hand otherwise it will be hard to remember exactly what the ideas were.
It is not the case that the person writing down the ideas should not contribute to them as well.
Naturally, it is an important job to write down the ideas.
However, to keep things fresh and to make sure that everyone can contribute ideas you could swap the scribe at particular intervals.
The archetypal recording system is the flipchart but why should this be the case?
Try other items. For example, electronic means.
Whatever mechanism you use the results should be visible to all; in the latter case by some sort of projection system.
However, once the ideas begin to gather you may have too many for all to see just by using a projector.