England77's picture Submitted by England77 on
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General Questions and Comments

Hi there,

I'm currently chairing a two weekly meeting which consists of the Managers (my peers) within my department (6 people, including me). This is on the following weeks of a department meeting which is chaired by the department manager and again attended by the other managers (also 2 weekly)

The reason for the meeting I chair was to take some of the detailed discussions out of the department meeting, so it could be more strategic focused.

The meeting i chair is scheduled for an hour an tends to center around a tracking spreadsheet of actions/issues. The problem is these meetings tend to get bogged down with lots of detail and we don't seem to ever get thorough all of the tracking spreadsheet in the meeting.

Also the other Managers don't tend to review the spreadsheet or update any actions prior to the meeting, which I suspect is the main reason it takes so long.

The meeting has my Managers support and he is glad that the detail has been removed from his meeting.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation that can advise on how to improve this situation. I don't look forward to these meetings and they seem to be losing effectiveness week on week.

 

 

 

 

 

tberge's picture
Training Badge
Submitted by tberge on Tuesday January 19th, 2010 4:07 pm

We also use a detailed spreadsheet for one of our meetings.  Each manager is required to update their portion of the spreadsheet 1 days prior to the meeting, and our admin compiles the results.  Therefore, the info is current and the updates have already been done.  This allows for the discussion to focus on issues and implementation.

Good luck!

mmann's picture
Licensee Badge
Submitted by mmann on Thursday January 21st, 2010 9:27 am

I have a few thoughts on this. 

If you're not doing it already, publish an agenda and stick to it. 

Focus the detailed discussions on the question, "What's the next action?"  Avoid discussing the past unless it's essential to answer this question.

Add a hot wash at the end of the meeting.

Ask your boss to attend the meeting, and add them as an optional attendee.  A couple of random visits from your boss will increase the pucker factor.

 

GlennFunamoto's picture
Submitted by GlennFunamoto on Tuesday February 9th, 2010 10:30 am

I had a similar problem which I solved using this multi-pronged approach:

  1. I send out Action items immediately after the meeting. I try to do it the same day, but sometimes it's the next day.
  2. The day before the meeting I send out a meeting confirmation with the material to be reviewed attached (or linked to the central repository)
  3. If there are Action items which require a lot of discussion with a group of people and a decision should be presented at the next or subsequent meetings, I facilitate that meeting too. I treat it as a sub-committee. Status is returned to the primary meeting and the unresolved issue remains on the Action Items until a decision of some fashion is reached
  4. This meeting started as a 90-minute meeting. I scheduled it against lunch to encourage the attendees to be efficient. We never over-ran the meeting, I guess I had a hungry team. The meeting is now scheduled for 11:15 - 12:15 and usually runs 30 minutes. We have never run into the lunch hour and attendance and commitment is very high.
  5. Management has mandated that meeting attendance is mandatory. I take attendance and provide feedback to the directors when a manager consistently doesn't attend or send a delegate.

Hope these ideas help.