11 Tips to Help you Get the Most out of your Meetings

This is a part of a series that was cre­at­ed to help you get the prac­tice of ret­ro­spec­tives built into your com­pany.  This series will walk through the approach, nec­es­sary roles, in addi­tion to guides for each role to help your com­pany get started quickly.

Get­ting the Most out of Your Meetings

Here are some tips for get­ting the most out of your meetings:

1. Come pre­pared with your ideas
2. Speak your mind – focus on the process, not people
3. Stay on topic – if ideas for other con­ver­sa­tions come to you, write them down and pur­sue them after the meeting
4. Treat oth­ers with respect – no blam­ing, no name-calling, no inter­rupt­ing, no crit­i­ciz­ing of peo­ple, their actions, or ideas
5. Keep an open mind when lis­ten­ing to others
6. No idea is a bad idea – even if your ideas seem far-fetched, throw them out there anyway
7. Be pre­pared to be very spe­cific with your ideas for improve­ment (e.g., rather than say­ing “we need to meet more often next time,” say “next time, we should meet every Fri­day and Tues­day from 9 to 10 am)
8. Know that many ideas for action­able improve­ments may be pre­sented; be pre­pared to work with your team mates to pri­or­i­tize these ideas and nar­row them down to 3 items to focus on as imme­di­ate action items (remain­ing items will be placed in a back­log for future consideration)
9. Thank any­one you should thank or apol­o­gize to any­one you should apol­o­gize to
10. Your team has iden­ti­fied 3 spe­cific, imme­di­ate, action­able improve­ments – be pre­pared to go back to work and imple­ment these changes imme­di­ately; if you encounter any dif­fi­cul­ties in doing so, con­tact your facil­i­ta­tor – who is respon­si­ble for fol­low­ing up on action items – immediately.
11. Last but not least, have fun! While the process may seem a bit daunt­ing at first, if you keep the big pic­ture in mind – con­tin­u­ous improve­ment for all – you’ll soon see the ben­e­fits for all of us.

Next week, I will provide a sample report to capture ideas and make notes on how to continually improve your process.