Successful Meetings

Meetings are a key component of the management system of any company. Whether as part of a product management process, sales and marketing, or general organization of management teams, people have meetings on a regular basis for a variety of reasons.

In the expansion stage software companies for whom OpenView Venture Partners provides venture capital, I typically see unstructured environments with people who dread meetings struggle to scale into more structured, larger companies.

Some companies have too many meetings with no tangible outputs and fall into execution paralysis.Other companies, having had experience only with overhead meetings that don’t provide value, shun meetings and move ahead in an unfocused, unaligned, inefficient state.

And so, when OpenView provides operational support as part of its strategic consulting services, we often help our companies implement effective meetings.

The details of the advice varies, depending on whether we’re providing sales and marketing support, recruiting support, help around product, or assistance with senior management team approaches, but there are several common points that are necessary for the success of almost any meeting, whether a sales pipeline review or product strategy update.

Some of the pointers helpful for a successful meeting are:

·  Have a *clear meeting goal* documented. Why are you having this meeting? What are you trying to achieve? Given the goal, is this meeting the best way of achieving it? Will this meeting add value?

·  Have the *output* of the meeting clearly defined. Is it feedback? An agreed upon set of next steps? A decision? A list of items? An update?

·  Clearly define the *inputs* you need going into the meeting to achieve the desired goal and output. What is the data that needs to be collected? Is there analysis that needs to be done? Is there problem solving that needs to be done ahead of the meeting?

·  Determine the *appropriate number of meeting participants* optimal for achieving the desired goal and output. If a problem needs to be solved, less is better. You probably want more participants for a meeting designed to increase a team’s knowledge or provide an update.

·  Determine *who is absolutely necessary* for this meeting to achieve the desired goal and output. This choice may be based on participants’ organizational locations, knowledge, skills, and/or meeting facilitation skills, among many other factors.

·  Appoint a *meeting leader / facilitator*. Be sure that the facilitator is well prepared for the meeting.

·  Create a *clear meeting agenda*, with participants’ input as necessary.

·  Set up the necessary *logistics*. What room is ideal? Do you need a projector? A white board? A large pad and markers? Food and drinks?

·  Document all the meeting details, and share with every participant (and anyone necessary to help set up the meeting). Make sure you have *everyone’s explicit alignment* on attending the meeting, and the meeting’s goal(s), output(s), participants, each participant’s role, necessary prep work (and who is doing it), the agenda, and the logistics.

·  During the meeting, use the agenda as a guide, but do not be so rigid as to limit *open communication*. Running the meeting warrants its own blog post, and I will write about it shortly.

·  Follow each meeting by sharing with all participants a*summary and detailed notes*, along with desired output(s), and next steps, if any, clearly defined and documented. You may want to request explicit confirmation from each participant that the summary, notes, output(s), and next steps are accurate based on their perception of the meeting.

The most important part of having an effective meeting is making sure that whatever is committed to in the meeting *actually gets done* within a reasonable time horizon, and all participants are updated on the progress.

If people don’t see meetings leading to action and change, they will view them as wasteful overhead. And they will be right.