It was an “All Hands” meeting to remember. My first with this client. He was a directorate head, with maybe a third of his 200-person team seated theater style. The rest were on Zoom. He paced in front of the room — back and forth, back and forth — with mic in hand. It was a two-hour meeting, held faithfully every month. Attendance was mandatory. He had 50-some slides to step through. And he did. Each one. In detail. Occasionally, he’d pause and ask one of his managers, “Do you agree?” and the manager would nod, or stand and say yes, and perhaps thank a member of their team. Then my client would resume pacing and presenting. As he spoke, he made it clear what in his view people should think and feel about the information he was presenting: e.g.: “You should know this.” “You should feel good about this.” “You shouldn’t be worried about this other thing.” “I didn’t like hearing xyz weren’t aware of this …” Etc. He closed with: “My door is always open” — but word had it few dared enter.
Meetings are a window into your organization’s culture. Ever been to a meeting where you wonder: “Why’re we even having this meeting? I could read this information sitting in my cube!” Have you noticed the same people always take up the most talk time? That we seem to cover the same ground every time? Or, are we actually meeting to discuss what we think, make a decision or take an action? Changing how we plan, conduct and report out of our meetings is a totally doable way to strengthen teamwork, get work done, build relationships and encourage innovation.
So, how to make meetings matter? Here are some specific things to ask and do that might help:
Do we actually need to meet? How about an email or a Teams chat, with a link to the relevant deck so meeting participants can interact with the information and make their thinking transparent to colleagues. Then, if you decide “Yes, we need to meet,” it’s about what people think and not a presenter show-and-tell. This makes the meeting more participant-driven and deepens investment in the meeting’s outcome.
Are we looking back or ahead? Many meetings focus more on what we did than on what we will do, who will do it, and how we’ll get it done. Ask people to read reports of what’s already been done before the meeting and be prepared to ask questions and talk about what needs to be next. Takeaway? Meetings need pre-reads and an agenda that lays out the desired outcome(s) of the meeting.
Speaking of agendas — is there one? Who had input into what’s on the agenda? Was it shared in advance of the meeting? If you want a quintessential “stakeholder engagement” tactic so that attendees are more likely to “own” the meeting, circulate a draft agenda prior to the meeting and invite ideas/feedback. It will turn “my meeting” into “our meeting.” Magic!
What will change because we had this meeting? For example, are there current or new challenges or problems we need to surface or resolve? New ideas or ways of doing what we’ve been doing? Do certain team members need to collaborate or coordinate who haven’t before? What do we need to learn? What actions and/or decisions must be made? In other words, what needs to be different coming out of that meeting?
Who’s doing the talking? Are we hearing from the same people at every meeting or are we encouraging new voices to be heard? Meetings are richer when senior leaders invite mid-level and, yes, front-line team members to take the lead in some way — e.g., conduct essential research perhaps, or spotlight a success that illustrates an approach or path others in the organization might emulate/build on. Or co-lead elements of the discussion perhaps? “Training” isn’t the only way junior colleagues can learn about (leading in) your organization. “Being in the room” provides experiential learning about the what, how, and why of hot topics in your organization, the role of meeting dynamics in decision-making and key insights into what’s working and isn’t regarding, say, your 12-month performance improvement strategy.
Are there opportunities for small group break outs? Break-outs needn’t just be for, say, strategy planning sessions: They can be make an all hands meeting come alive — and more productive. A structured 10 minute conversation that brings together people from across the organization who don’t usually work together or talk with each other has impact. They can explore, discuss, and innovate. And begin to build relationships and new ways of collaborating. Outputs from short break-outs can be brought back to the whole group via a round robin to infuse new thinking into key decision-making, actions that need to be taken, and energy for consensus and forward movement.
What happened at this meeting? Before the meeting ends, identify the top themes and actions to share with people who didn’t attend but have a stake in your meeting outcomes. Make sure you include info about who received kudos and thanks (and why!) from colleagues during the meeting — it will inspire! Minutes are usually too lengthy. Instead, capture the main take-aways and opportunities for change. What is going to happen because of that meeting? And what’s in it for those who weren’t there — i.e., in what ways did that meeting matter to the organization? Because, if the meeting didn’t matter to the organization, why did we have the meeting?
Are our meetings working for us? Invite participants to discuss what worked well and what should be different next time to make the meeting more productive. And then, act on their input when planning and implementing meetings going forward.
Time for 21st century meetings: Digital tools can make meetings more efficient than ever, for sure. But if we don’t engage the people in our organization in ways that matter and help us create change, then all we’re doing is technologizing a 1950s top-down approach to meetings — and that won’t make our meetings more productive, nor will it change our organization’s culture.
Nina Kern is principal of InterrogativesWork, LLC, a change advisory service dedicated to helping clients and consultants plan and implement organizational change. She has supported a wide variety of organizational change efforts — from digital transformations and functional re-alignments to the stand-up of enterprise risk management programs, PMOs, performance improvement initiatives, org-wide policy and culture change, and more. She has an MS in Organization Development, an MA in Communications, graduated from both the Johns Hopkins Fellows in Change Management Program and Georgetown University’s McDonough School’s Change Management Advanced Practitioner Program (CMAP), and is ProSci trained. More of Nina’s writings on organizational change can be found on GovLoop, Change Management Review, and Government Executive.
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