Episode 13: How to run effective meetings

👋 Yo! Welcome to the next episode of How to Negotiate where you learn how to grow your career and income with better negotiation strategy in less than 5 minutes. 

As a joke, there was a tweet about calculating the cost of meetings to disincentivize meetings that were not a good use of time. Ramp actually released a free chrome extension that provides a meeting cost directly in Google Calendar.

While funny, the reality is we have hundreds of meetings that are utterly useless. The difference between a productive and unproductive meeting is a few small tweaks.

Some structure is better than no structure

Teams, personalities, and moods differ wildly from day to day (or even meeting to meeting). The most important takeaway is being fluid — always be open to feedback/input based on what the room needs.

Try something for a bit and regularly ask for feedback on how it’s going/what’s most useful. Your goal should not be deciding the best format and getting everyone to follow; instead, introduce a change and then poll the group on how it went after.

Your goal is to create a culture of experimentation. Lean toward yes and if it doesn’t work be open to changing.

The title of the invite should tell you what you’re trying to accomplish

One recommendation for meetings is to use a tag at the beginning of the title to help everyone prepare for what is to come - plan, decide, inform.

Note: these are for recurring meetings outside of 1-1’s.

Plan - by the end of the meeting you need to walk out with a plan. This meeting is when the project/initiative requires a cross-functional team to drive rather than one person. The first step is talking about a realistic timeline and working backward in the form of short sprints.

Decide - by the end of the meeting you need to make a specific decision. This meeting is best done in small groups (5 max) and should always include a pre-read. I find the Amazon method of spending the first 5 or so of the meeting for everyone to silently read the pre-read and ask clarifying questions for context very effective. After the pre-read you reiterate the decision you need to make at the end and dive in.

Note: Amazon’s method has also been critiqued as it’s not inclusive to neurodiverse or disabilities individuals

Inform - you want to update a person/team on a decision made by another team. This is most helpful for downstream folks - e.g. operations teams like billing or legal. A mental model on when an ‘inform’ should be a meeting vs. an async update is the likelihood of follow-up questions. For nuances like billing/legal, I find it always best to sync live (and give time back) rather than try to update async.

When possible, these 3 meeting types would occur in this order with working sessions in 1-1 to iron out the details. You would also plan out your own deep work time to think through approaches, trade-offs, or articulating your thoughts.

Pressure test the invite list and content regularly

My first question to attendees is often ‘do we have the right people in the room for this conversation?’. The intent here is to get everyone regularly thinking about the role each individual plays in the conversation to avoid unnecessary attendees or making decisions without a relevant perspective represented.

On an ad hoc basis (for all recurring meetings) I ask ‘how can this session be more useful for you?’. Even if the answer the first time doesn’t lead to a concrete change, it’s important to regularly ask to keep a pulse on how the meeting may need to evolve in content covered, attendees, length or frequency.

Always volunteer to take notes to create a structured approach to the meeting

Even if it’s not your meeting, you should start a notes doc with a consistent structure (if it doesn’t;t already exist). In G-suite, you can create a notes template for quick access to your customized template or one of my favorite shortcuts in G-suite is to use ‘docs.new’ in the search bar for a new blank Google doc. The downside is that you must remember to organize the folder in a specific location later, but this shortcut is helpful for on-the-fly creation.

During the meeting, break up the information with clear headers like ‘context’, ‘discussion’, ‘open questions’, and ‘next steps’. You also want to note the date of the meeting and attendees for quick reference for yourself and others who were not part of the meeting.

Note: These shortcuts work for sheets (‘sheets.new’), slides (‘slides.new’) and other apps as well - you can find all .new shortcuts here.

People often (incorrectly) assume that people understand what good looks like in meetings. People often silently dread meetings because of how poorly they are run. If people don’t have a solution on how to improve, they tend to say nothing.

Inspiration is always helpful, but ultimately you need a small group of people you trust to share knowledge with and for everyone else to promote an experimentation mindset from the beginning. 

If you have any other ideas that have made meetings more productive, I’d love to hear them. Simply respond to this email.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode — good or bad. See ya next week 👋 

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✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏