Replacing meetings with emails. Why not?

Meetings are important. They make the wheels go round.

Well formatted meetings are increasingly important in an online world with remote working. With just a screen to reference off, it is important that the participants feel part of it. Any less than that with infinitely more enticing sources sapping off our attention, the meeting becomes a shell of its former self. It congregates stakeholders together but defeats its purpose.

Why do we meet-ing?

Meetings serve a very specific function as we humans attempt to work together to reach a goal. Whether you’re one in a million homo sapiens living in the savanna during the Stone age discussing over the fire what to have for dinner with your fellow hunter gatherers; or a modern day British short hair negotiating with your co-living partner, the Maine coon if you get the sofa or the floor for the day. This all involves meeting, with the idea to discuss with your counterparts how to go about completing said task.

Meetings help to make decisions in a formal or less formal setting (handshake deal). Regardless, a big part of it is to supply information and know-how, and to impart a sense of preferred method of handling things to your team.

Why do I dislike meeting?

Meetings have a bad reputation, and it is justified.

Too often, we carry out these process-oriented meetings, supposedly regularly scheduled in nature done in an ad hoc manner; disguised as mission-oriented meetings with no clear goals, but in truth brainstorming/ research sessions that could have been done offline should we took the effort to plan them in advance (I will get into process-oriented and mission-oriented meetings later).

As such, we get these half assed meetings that anyone with no preparation could sleepwalk through. It looks good on paper because ‘work’ was done, however it was anything but that.

Poor meeting with no clear set agenda leaves participants feeling drained. A good meeting gives participants a clear idea of their tasks and roles in the project. It is important to stress that a meeting without having done the bare minimum - research, set of agenda, questions for counterpart, desired clear outcome, is akin to wasting your counterpart’s time. This figure multiplied by the number of participants involved does not paint a pretty picture of time well spent.

How do I meet-ing?

There are two types of meetings: process-oriented meeting and mission-oriented meeting.

Process oriented meeting is regularly scheduled. The goal is to share and exchange information, knowledge regularly. It has a fixed format – length of session, type of matters to be discussed, tasks to be accomplished, type of engagement needed. The idea behind this is to ‘batch’ sessions up and impart sense of regularity to the team’s workflow.

Task batching is a productivity strategy that involves grouping similar tasks together to complete all at once. The concept aims to avoid switching in between tasks, reducing the need to multitask. This enables the user to better reach a flow state/ ‘in the zone’ – being fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and the enjoyment in the process of the activity.

Q: Why exchange information in meeting when you can do it offline through emails?

This type of meeting is not intended as a verbalised session of the research and work done offline.

It allows an opportunity for anything important to be highlighted to the team, e.g. project status, potential problems, performance metrics. Anything that nags or preoccupy the team, ought to be raised. At times, issues are not tangible or do not fall under specific category. In such, this format serves to address those issues, either on a one-to-one basis or group meeting.

Sub teams that would otherwise not interact with each other would also understand the impact of their work on a grand scale, now that they see how the parts fit in. These sessions enable continuous learning and teaching intra teams too. It creates opportunities to learn by listening to presenters and audience interact. If there is an opposing view, it allows greater intensity of discussion. All these aggregated allow the decision maker to completely tap the team’s potential.

Mission-oriented meeting is ad hoc in nature, the goal here is to produce a decision. Often, the specific goal and time sensitive nature of the meeting means that it is less rigid than process-oriented meeting. The participants should understand explicitly the goal of the session, and henceforth, time spent on any matters should propel towards deciding an outcome at the end of the session. The duty of moderating the session falls under the individual that called the meeting.

Q: How do I know if I need a process or mission-oriented meeting?

Ask yourself this

- What am I trying to accomplish?

- Is the meeting necessary? Why?

- Justify why it cannot wait for the next scheduled process-oriented meeting?

How to elevate my meeting experience?

Here are some tips I have found useful for both offline and online meetings, categorised into before, during and after.

Before

Most meetings should be planned far in advanced and scheduled regularly if permissible. With adequate planning, only very rarely do we need to improvise on the go.

Schedule meeting out on a rolling basis, send your outline, agenda, pre reading materials out to the necessary parties.

For longer term relationships, it is useful to set up channels where parties could have their requests, meeting agendas stored in a common drive. This reliefs both parties from having to store this information down mentally.

During

Writing notes and typing minutes is a great way of signalling to your counterpart that their words matter. Issues discussed and statements made have swaying abilities towards end decision. This is particularly useful when incremental decisions are made in multiple seating than in a singular meeting. With previous minutes available, this allows the team to have a peek at the thinking process in real time, thereby serve as institutional memory and potential case studies to be revisited in time.

On a practical level, note taking keeps the mind from drifting. User is forced to make sense and categorise the information. Note taking also implies a commitment handshake that something will be done. Any objections would otherwise be made and not noted down physically.

After

Sending minutes to participants is an important and often overlooked part to a meeting. Similarly, minutes imply a commitment handshake that both parties have agreed to the items discussed.

Make the wheels go round

I am very much a culprit of some of these misdeeds, and have overtime realised that some meetings have not been the best use of our times. Some of these memes hit waaaay too close to home too smh

Happy to hear how you run your meetings, or systems you came across that enable better and more efficient way of making the wheels go round!

This is a first of a series of articles as I learn about the key components to running a business.