For Effective Meetings, leverage the Meeting Bill of Rights

Meetings become enormously important as a medium of work execution as people become more senior over time. I've seen that the quality of meetings vary from person to person and organization to organization. Over the years, I've found the following principles very useful to frame my approach to meetings. I'm sharing this with you - hope you find it useful as well. Cheers!

 Adapted from "The Secrets to Masterful Meetings" (PDF); How Jeff Bezos runs meetings.

Your Meeting Bill of Rights

  1. Meeting Notice.You have the right to be informed about the purpose and proposed agenda for a meeting, verbally or in writing, at least twenty-four hours in advance of the meeting.
  2. Timely Start.You have the right to attend meetings that start on time. 3 minutes late: issue a reminder; 7 minutes late: meeting cancelled. 
  3. Right People.You have the right to have all major viewpoints critical to decision-making represented at the meeting. Conversely, If you're not useful to the meeting, feel free to leave.
  4. Right Information.You have the right to have the information necessary to facilitate decision-making available at the meeting. Come prepared.
  5. Ground Rules.You have the right to have agreed upon ground rules respected in the meeting.
  6. Focused Discussion.You have the right for meetings to stay focused on the topic of the meeting.
  7. Input Opportunity.You have the right to have the opportunity to provide input and alternative views before decision-making occurs in the meeting.
  8. Meeting Recap.You have the right to hear a recap of (a) decisions made during the meeting, (b) actions to be taken, when and by whom, following the meeting, and (c) any outstanding issues to be discussed at a future meeting.
  9. Timely Completion.You have the right to have your time respected by having meetings finish at or before the scheduled end time.
  10. No Retribution.You have the right to exercise YourMeeting Rights without fear of retribution or other consequences.

If you have the right people, the right information, a focused discussion and a recap of the decisions and action items of the meeting, the meeting is successful.

What's expected in the Agenda?

  1. Specify the type of meeting
    1. Problem Solving
    2. Decision Making
    3. Knowledge Sharing
    4. Status Update
    5. Innovation
    6. Team Building
  2. For Problem Solving and Decision Making meetings: clearly specify the issue or the decision as part of the agenda. 
    1. At close, recap and ensure that a decision was reached.
  3. For Information Sharing / Status Update meetings: come prepared with the shareable information (ideally written down)
    1. At close, recap information and determine action items.
  4. For Innovation meetings: Suspend judgement.
    1. Brainstorming happens in 2 phases: Flare and Focus. They should take place separately.
    2. Flare: Use "Yes, and..." language instead of "Yes, but...". "Yes, and..." is collaborative and stimulates discussion
    3. If you have concerns, hold them aside for the focus meeting.
  5. Team Building: Have fun! Get to know the team and skip talking about work. 
    1. The goal is to know and trust your teammates. 

Here's a few examples

Meeting: Qingxian : Divye - Realtime Feature Monitoring Status
Date: Jan 4, 2019

Description:
Agenda: Knowledge Sharing
=====================
1. Qingxian: Status of RT Feature Monitoring; Demo of current state.
2. Any action items for Divye?


Meeting: David : Divye – follow up on HF Training Doc
Date: Jan 3, 2019

Description:
Agenda
=======
1. Sync on Homefeed training

Outcome: Knowledge sharing.
Preparation: Divye to look at code pointers in the doc before the meeting.


Meeting: Divye : P - Sell Call - Software Engineer, ML Platform
Date: Jan 3, 2019

Description:
=========
- Expecting an offer from X
- Interviewing with A, B, C, D, E, F 
- Top choices are Pinterest, Airbnb, and Lyft
- Priorities: good culture, likes the product, team/project, tech lead, eventual mgmt
- Concerns: does team/project have enough scope, leadership opportunities, how do we support IC to managers?


It's not necessary to be explicit about the type of meeting in the agenda (as long as it's clear what needs to get done by the end of the meeting). A few maxims - don't leave a decision meeting without the decision made, if not made, have clearly identified next steps. For a problem solving meeting, leave only after next steps are identified. Recap is the most important part of a Knowledge sharing meeting and people in a Team Building event should always leave happy after a round of chit-chat. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Coke Studio: Madari English Meaning and Lyrics

AJAX और हिंदी

Sadi Gali - Punjabi Lyrics and Meaning (in English) - Tanu Weds Manu

Tune Meri Jaana Kabhi Nahin Jaana - Lonely (Emptiness) - IIT Guwahati - Rohan Rathore

Solved? LaTeX Error: pdf file is damaged - attempting to reconstruct xref table