People hate them because they’re doing it wrong.
Two things that get in the way of effective meetings:
1. Lack of preparation
2. Lack of candor
Lack of preparation: Most meetings that are rambling conversations with no clear beginning middle or end. This is frustrating. One framework that overcomes this is GAP:
Goal: What is the goal of the meeting?
Agenda: What is the agenda? For each agenda point, who is responsible for facilitating??
Pre-work: What work should be done before showing up?
A good way to enforce this is to allow people not to show up to meetings if those three items are not set and shared in advance.
Also, define a facilitator and a person to record and follow up on next steps.
If you want to take it even further you can define next steps in the following way:
Person Responsible
Date Due
Concrete deliverable
Person responsible for review and date of review
Using frameworks like this take the guesswork out of meeting and means that you will spend less time
Lack of candor: The points above and more are common knowledge. But, if someone in your meeting knows them but doesn’t speak up, it doesn’t matter. Hence, the importance of candor. Candor is difficult to encourage but comes down to two main things:
1. An Environment of Trust: People must feel safe speaking up. They must know that they will not be penalized for disagreeing.
2. Incentivize Candor: On the flip side, you should not just refrain from punishing people for speaking up, you should reward them for doing so.
^Day 23/90 271 words
konrad kopczynski 