How to run a successful meeting? Adam Bryant of the New York Times suggests the following 3 things in his article “How to Run a More Effective Meeting“:
1. Set an agenda
2. Start on Time. End on Time.
3. End with an Action Plan.
Sounds reasonable. Even obvious but then he gives some golden advice:
1. Leaders should set the agenda and then get out of the way.
He quotes David M. Cote, the former chief executive of Honeywell as saying.
“Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning of the meeting,” he said. “It’s your job to flush out all the facts, all the opinions, and at the end make a good decision, because you’ll get measured on whether you made a good decision, and not whether it was your idea from the beginning.”
2. The second thing that really resonated with me is the advice to do a “meeting audit” periodically.
Lew Cirne, the chief of New Relic, a software analytics company, says:
“One of the things I do on a quarterly basis is to review the standing meetings on my calendar, and every one of them ought to be able defend itself,” he said. “The point is not to keep going to that meeting just because you always have to go. I ask myself ‘Why?’ and I encourage my managers to question their calendars, too.”
The article is a really good read, informed by years of the journalists work with hundreds of business leaders. I’m inspired to take action to make my meetings better.
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