Page 186 - Becoming a Successful Manager

Mastering Productive Meetings Is as Easy as PIE 177

Assuming one of your goals is to minimize negative impact on
productivity, choose a time and duration that is appropriate for the
meeting. The meeting time is never perfect for anyone, so provid-
ing enough lead time before the meeting allows your employees to
plan accordingly. As for planning the agenda, meetings that are too
short have the potential of forsaking achieving objectives for brev-
ity. On the other hand, studies show that people’s attention spans
have decreased as technology advances have increased. Meetings
that run too long fall victim to that problem and the value for the
purpose starts to decrease.
Parkinson’s Law, named for C. Northcote Parkinson, a notable
British economist, states: “Every job can be expanded to fi ll the
amount of time allotted to it.” If a one-hour period is scheduled
for a meeting, the meeting will usually last an hour—or perhaps a
little more. If it’s two hours on the schedule, then that’s how long
the meeting will last. Choose your agenda with a fi nite purpose
and appropriate schedule in mind.
Build an agenda carefully, and stay with it. Ask prospective attend-
ees what issues they would like brought up so that you can include

them as appropriate. If a suggestion doesn’t fit the current agenda and
is not urgent, put it on a future agenda. Allocate a time limit for each
item to be covered, and plan how you’ll keep track of the time from
the very start of the meeting. If conditions require, you can always
add time to a particular item by subtracting an equal amount from
another item or by postponing the other item until the next meeting.
Print the agenda and distribute copies to all participants—
prior to the meeting whenever possible but certainly no later
than the start of the meeting. Have extra copies available for any
unexpected attendees. If you delegate any part of this task to an
employee, be sure the person understands the importance of a
concise and readily available agenda.