Effective Meetings & the Change Management Process | Operational Excellence Quick Hits

Speaker 2: (00:06)
In this session on organizational excellence, we’re going to talk about the change management process and part of that change management processes is being able to conduct effective meetings. So this session, we’re going to talk about effective meetings. Part of the change, the management process, we have this matrix of the negatives of not changing the positives of change, the positives of not changing and the negatives of change. So again, if you’re facilitating a meeting and you have this change management matrix in mind, what you want to do is make sure that you’re able to facilitate the meeting to take into consideration people that can be in all four of these boxes. How do we conduct effective meetings? So some techniques here for conducting effective meetings, first always come prepared for the meetings. That means beforehand, we should have an agenda, action items signed, assigned from previous meetings and so forth.

Speaker 2: (01:06)
What that doesn’t mean is don’t start preparing for the meeting 10 minutes before the meeting? You should be preparing well ahead of time. So you come into the meeting, prepared second, always have a meeting agenda. So we can’t have an effective meeting without an agenda. Also, assign somebody that’s going to facilitate the meeting. Somebody that’s going to be the scribe and somebody who’s going to be the timekeeper to keep the meeting on schedule. And so for the scribe, I always like to take the meeting notes in the meeting and assign action items during the meeting. So at the end of the meeting, the minutes can be distributed and you’re not spending time after the meeting to do the minutes. Next, start and end the meetings on time. So don’t wait for people to show up. If they’re late, then they’ll miss part of the meeting, but we want to make sure that we start and end on time because there’s usually many people in the meeting and their time is important.

Speaker 2: (02:02)
Next is focus on abnormality. So we want to discuss the things that aren’t going well. We don’t want to focus on the things that are going well. So don’t repeat all the things that have gone well. We want to just focus on those abnormalities, where are the issues? And the key here is don’t solve the problems in the meeting. So the problem arises, have a discussion, a brief discussion about what is the problem, get agreement on the problem, and then assign it offline to have somebody work on coming up a resolution to the problem outside the meeting. So then they come back to the next meeting and report what they found and what the action items needed to be to go forward. And then lastly, practice, WAIT, so WAIT stands for, why am I talking? So if you haven’t heard this terminology, here’s a brief flow chart that talks about WAIT, which means why am I talking?

Speaker 2: (02:59)
We can start with this flow chart and say, okay, why am I talking? I have something really important to say, if, no, why am I talking if, or I have a very strong opinion to share? If yes, then is that the correct time to do that? If, no, why am I talking? If it is the correct time, be concise. Make sure you’re explaining exactly what your point is in as few words as possible. Also, on the other side here, why am I talking? I have an on-topic contribution. If no, then why am I talking? If yes, is it my turn to share my opinion? If, no, why am I talking? If yes, did someone else already make this contribution? If yes, why am I talking? We don’t need to rehash what somebody else has already brought up if no, be concise.

Speaker 2: (03:51)
Here’s some basic simple tips to help make meetings more effective. And most companies I go into their in meetings for hours and hours and hours, try to make the meeting short and concise. So I like 15 minute meetings or 30 minute meetings. If you can’t keep the meeting short, one of the techniques to shorten the meetings is have stand-up meetings. When people are standing the whole meeting, it’s amazing. The meetings go relatively quickly. Hopefully you can use some of these techniques in your organization to improve your meeting effectiveness. This is an important part of the change management process, effective meetings.