The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Help just in time

When he asks his col­leagues for a meet­ing and know that they will need input, insights, help, or an opin­ion from a spe­cif­ic col­league who is an expert at some­thing, he will ask him­self if this col­league real­ly needs to attend the full meet­ing. He has found that this often is not nec­es­sary, which is why he will ask the expert-col­league to join the meet­ing at the time when he esti­mates they will need his or her input. This tends to be dur­ing the last ten min­utes of the meet­ing, dur­ing which every­one asks the ques­tions that have arisen through­out the meet­ing and the expert pro­vides answers.

Min­i­mize time ​”wast­ed”

This is a trick that is just as sim­ple as it is clever if you ask me. And, judg­ing by how many of those I meet who express frus­tra­tion due to spend­ing time in meet­ings they do not feel they con­tribute much to or get any­thing out of, more peo­ple should use it.

Do this

If you, like I, acknowl­edge the sim­ple bril­liance in Mag­nus’ trick, then do the fol­low­ing the next time you ask oth­ers to meet with you:

1. When you are mak­ing up your mind as to who needs to join the meet­ing, pause and con­sid­er if every­one real­ly needs to attend the full meeting.
2. If there is some­one who only needs to join for part of the meet­ing, ask them to attend at the time you believe you will need their input the most. If it is dif­fi­cult to pre­dict when dur­ing the meet­ing the expert’s opin­ion will come in handy, this might be so because you are not cer­tain how long all the items on the agen­da will take to dis­cuss and address. You do, how­ev­er, know the dura­tion of the meet­ing (let’s say an hour for the sake of argu­ment) and that you will have dis­cussed most things on the agen­da by the end of it. As an expe­ri­enced leader of meet­ings, you will prob­a­bly be able to make an esti­mat­ed guess as to how much time you will need to allo­cate for each top­ic or item — or at least how much time you can ​”afford” to spend on each. Writ­ing down your esti­mat­ed guess­es will give you more of a sched­ule than an agen­da and you will be able to guess at what time the expert should join.
3. Dur­ing the meet­ing itself, cre­ate a ​”park­ing lot” where you can ​”park” any ques­tions that arise which will be per­fect for the expert to answer once he or she joins. A Pos­tIt or note will do, as will a seg­ment in the dig­i­tal notes you are tak­ing (if you are, that is).
4. After the meet­ing, reflect on how well this strat­e­gy worked. What will you do dif­fer­ent­ly next time you try this approach to make it even more valu­able for all par­ties involved?

More enthu­si­asm and time for the right things

If you opti­mize who par­tic­i­pates in your meet­ings (either for meet­ings in gen­er­al or only for spe­cif­ic parts of the meet­ings), you will prob­a­bly end up with meet­ings where the par­tic­i­pants are far more enthu­si­as­tic and com­mit­ted than before since you now include few­er peo­ple who feel they are nei­ther con­tribut­ing nor gain­ing much.

If you are one of the peo­ple who find your­self in many dif­fer­ent meet­ings dur­ing every week since you have a cer­tain com­pe­tence or posi­tion which makes your pres­ence high in demand, you will have much more time for all your oth­er task if this approach or meth­ods like it are adopt­ed through­out your organization.

Mak­ing bet­ter use of the time you have at your dis­pos­al def­i­nite­ly makes work more enjoy­able if you ask me.

Any oth­er suggestions?

What tips or tricks do you use to make sure the right peo­ple are par­tic­i­pat­ing to the right extent in the meet­ings you are respon­si­ble for? Email me and share your thoughts.

(By the way, have you tried out this meet­ing note tem­plate that lets you go from meet­ing to action easier?)