Running an effective meeting requires creating an effective process. There are several components of the meeting process: that will determine how the meeting is run.
- Agenda,
- Facilitation,
- Presentations,
- Approaches to decision-making,
- Pacing and
- Follow up
These are all components of how the work of the meeting gets done, which is, in turn, important to reaching the objective, determining the quality of the outcome, and satisfying the participants in the meeting itself. Let’s take a little more detailed look:
- The agenda sets the stage for the meeting: It lists the items the meeting will address and often the time frame for each agenda item. It also lists the participants and the leaders - with their responsibilities.
- Facilitation often involves taking on the role of facilitator yourself ( if you are the meeting planner) or delegating it to a colleague, subordinate, or resident expert in the topic being addressed. A facilitator is not a leader imposing a solution or pre-determined decision on a group.
- Presentations, if there are any, are a way to provide information, impart institutional knowledge, or alternatives to be considered. They can be one person talking, a team lecture, a set of PowerPoint slides, or a audio/ video or Internet production.
- Methods used for solving problems and making decisions (for meetings other than straight presentations of information) will determine both the quality of the solution or decision and the participants’ satisfaction with the process.
- For example, approaches to decision-making will affect whether or not a meeting in which decisions have to be made has win-win outcomes.
- Some decision-making methods, such as voting, have win-lose outcomes;
- others, such as the well-known “free-for-all”, have lose-lose outcomes.
- Consensus, achieved through collaboration and problem solving, is the win-win approach. Consensus is the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned, which requires group critical reasoning and may involve negotiation.
- Pacing, or keeping a meeting on track, demonstrates respect for the participants and maintains the energy in a meeting. One component of trust is ending the meeting at the announced time.
- A meeting without follow up is a meeting wasted. Identifying and assigning action steps is only as good as the follow up to ensure the action steps taken.
A Note on Institutional Knowledge
Institutional knowledge is the cumulative, retrievable, and collective knowledge and experience possessed by the members of an organization. This knowledge has to do with the history of a business or organization, it’s processes, products/services, business practices, markets, and competitors. Organizations run the risk of losing their institutional knowledge when that information resides in the brain of only one employee. All of that knowledge and experience will be lost when that individual leaves the organization.
One final tip: To make your presentation most effective, remember to tailor it to your audience’s needs. For example, a presentation for the marketing team for a new prescription drug need a different presentation than do the pharmaceutical chemists that developed it.
