The product of an effective meeting leaves the room in the changed attitudes, understanding and intentions of its attendees. And pursuing these intentions serves to reinforce the attitudes and understanding.
But it is the intentions that are often the most fragile. Back in the real world they tend to evaporate in the heat of the day to day. People can easily forget them if they are not written down. Read More
It is therefore vitally important to use the end of the meeting to embed them and secure them in a way that they do not disappear. And to make it easy for those taking responsibility for their delivery to be clear on what is expected.
Clarity is key
Ensure each intention is clearly defined: What is to be delivered (to what quality); by when; and by whom. This is a key step in ensuring the value of a meeting. Despite this, it can be a real struggle to drive the required clarity. Sometimes it seems that people would rather leave the meeting with vague actions than commit themselves to taking responsibility for outcomes and timescales.
But where actions are left vague in terms of timescale or responsibility, this has a big negative impact on progress between meetings. As a consequence, this necessitates an increase in the number of meetings required to make progress.
Commitment
People sometimes miss the point that a decision made in a meeting is relatively useless if people are not actually committed to taking responsibility for it.
Where commitment is lacking, it is not uncommon that the actions drag out across multiple follow up meetings. Deadlines slip and interdependencies are not supported when they need to be. Read More
Commitment may be understood differently
But what do we actually mean by commitment? And how do we ensure that level of commitment? Commitment can be a vague term. At various times we discover it can mean a range of things as described by the list on the right. However, only the lower items on the list represent any certainty of progress.
To ensure the right levels of commitment, it is important that the person taking responsibility for it is identified. And to ensure that individual personally accepts that responsibility. They can only really do this if they have the opportunity to state any reservations. And to flag up any support or resources required. If reservations are raised, ensure that adjustments are made to address those reservations. Or redefine the action to fit within what is available. Adjust the input and the output until there is clear confidence in taking responsibility for delivery of the action.
Testing commitment
A useful mechanism to check confidence and commitment is the £500 bet. Asking people whether they would be willing to bet their own money on a successful outcome is a great way to surface reservations and issues.
But what of actions that are allocated to people outside of the meeting? We would recommend that actions should never be set on people outside of the meeting, only taken by people within the meeting. They may need to work with others to deliver them – but it is their responsibility to ensure that happens.
If you are finding that your meetings lack that commitment from your participants, you can access tools and techniques to address this in Section 9 of the ToolChest
Progress
More often than not, whatever the reasons given in the meeting, there is one key factor in lack of progress between meetings. The fact is ‘I was not sufficiently committed to make progress and/or face the hassle of highlighting and resolving the issues as and when they arose‘. Or alternatively ‘I encountered an obstacle which seemed to me to present a sufficiently valid excuse for me to get on with other things instead‘. Read More
Don’t rush the end of the meeting
In other words, an insufficient degree of ‘taking responsibility’. That may sound harsh, and to be fair it is not always true. But the reality is that these attitudes (in others AND in ourselves) are far more common than we like to admit.
If your meetings have a tradition of weak delivery of actions, plan more time for the final part of the meeting where actions are defined. Consider a pre-mortem exercise. And ensure everything is documented and circulated.
You can access other related tools in Section 0 of the ToolChest
Strategic Improvement
Use the model below to develop a vision for how you want your meetings to be different going forward. Research the resources above to develop a coherent plan for how you plan to bring about improvement.
For a complete copy of the Maturity Model, click here.
For a selection of resources which support ‘action’, please go to: https://meeting.toolchest.org/tag/action/
