Meeting Mastery for CEOs

What is a CEO’s #1 tool? Meet­ings, meet­ings, meetings.

What­ev­er vision peo­ple have for what a CEO does and what makes them effec­tive, the real­i­ty – aside from time to think strate­gi­cal­ly – is that the major­i­ty spend most of their time in meet­ings. Meet­ings with team, ven­dors, poten­tial employ­ees, key thought lead­ers, indus­try reg­u­la­tors, etc. Meet­ing mas­tery is how things get done.

A CEO’s job is to orga­nize the resources that cre­ate a great return on invest­ment for the orga­ni­za­tion, and to ensure that the orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues to get stronger and more capa­ble over time.

Meet­ing mas­tery is impor­tant because CEOs acti­vate impor­tant actions and deci­sions for their orga­ni­za­tions through meetings.

Many peo­ple have a love-hate rela­tion­ship with meet­ings. Hate because meet­ings are often inef­fec­tive, unfo­cused, drain­ing, no-fun time wasters. Love when they are high­ly effec­tive – when you find ways to dial in and opti­mize them, and to make them an amaz­ing a tem­plate for oth­ers in your orga­ni­za­tion to replicate.

Ide­al­ly, leav­ing every meet­ing should be a ​“Hell yeah!”. And that takes great preparation.

“Vic­to­ri­ous war­riors win first and then go to war,

while defeat­ed war­riors go to war first and then seek to win.”

- Sun Tzu

This quote could­n’t apply more to meet­ings. Meet­ings are made effec­tive before they begin.

No agen­da, no attenda

If there’s no agen­da, who­ev­er is run­ning the meet­ing hasn’t put the work in to be ready.

• Be clear on the out­come you want to achieve.
• Set the right, min­i­mum meet­ing time. The short­er the bet­ter. Many amaz­ing meet­ings can be five, 10 or 15 min­utes. If pos­si­ble, arrange to not have a meeting.
• Make sure that the fewest peo­ple pos­si­ble attend.
• Ask peo­ple to pre-pre­pare. I’m a big fan of short pre­sen­ta­tions or two-page doc­u­ments to sum­ma­rize what needs to be processed before the meeting.

Meet­ing Mas­tery: Tips for run­ning an effec­tive meeting

• Assign some­one to note all deci­sions and actions.
• Review and dis­cuss pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed incom­plete deci­sions and actions.
• Cre­ate a sys­tem to review those actions to make sure they get completed.
• Cre­ate and fol­low a code of con­duct. Include things like whether peo­ple should have elec­tron­ics in meet­ings, or rais­ing of hands when it’s time to contribute.

Man­age the traf­fic and cadence

Use key phras­es like:

• “OK, two min­utes left.”
• When some­one goes off track ask ​“How does that relate to this dis­cus­sion?” or ​“Back to the ques­tion at hand.”
• When a new, non-rel­e­vant idea comes up, say ​“Can you take that offline?” or ​“Let’s add that to the park­ing lot.”
• When some­one com­pli­cates an issue, ask ​“Could you say that again in one sen­tence?” or ​“Could you say that again in very sim­ple lan­guage for me?”

Wrap it up

• Recap deci­sions. Clar­i­fy actions or next steps.
• Look for ways to make the meet­ing bet­ter, if there is time. Ask what was effec­tive and how to make it more effec­tive next time.

Fin­ish on time

• Use timers. I’m a big believ­er in the ⁸⁰⁄₂₀ rule of dis­cus­sions: a max­i­mum of 20% of the time to share infor­ma­tion (to present or be read) and 80% for dis­cus­sion and debate to make decisions.

The Chal­lenge

• Which of your meet­ings need notable improve­ment, so that you can enjoy par­tic­i­pat­ing, and come away feel­ing they are well worth the time?

ADDI­TION­AL PODCASTS

More about this in Episode 114 of The Growth Whis­per­ers Podcast

How to Lever­age Your Col­lec­tive Intel­li­gence in Meetings

How to Have More Effec­tive Meetings

Fill Your Week with Strate­gic Meetings

ADDI­TION­AL ARTICLES

Team Meet­ings, Debates and the Pow­er of Bowl­ing Balls

12 Tips for Bet­ter Busi­ness Meetings

The Quar­ter­ly Strate­gic Plan­ning Meeting

No Agen­da, No Attenda

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