Meeting strategies

Abstract

A meeting is a formal or informal event where individuals meet either face-to-face or virtually (by the use of audio or video conference tools). In projects, groups of people need to discuss, align, inform etc., hence there exists numerous purposes and needs for meetings. They are essential for collaboration and decision making in a project and revolve around key project management activities such as cost, scheduling and quality.

Research reveals that even though managers spend more than 50% of their time in meetings, many meetings fail[1]. Project managers often need to not only participate frequently in meetings, but also plan, facilitate and evaluate meetings throughout the entire project life cycle and especially during the execution phase. Project Managers can use this as an opportunity to implement strategies for creating and managing effective meetings.

The purpose of this article is to provide a framework and guidelines for project managers to consider and implement in projects. In order to develop an in-dept framework, this article builds on state-of-the-art research and studies on meetings from leading universities and standards on project management from PMI BOK.

Meeting guidelines and methodology is based on contributions and experience from the construction and pharmaceutical industries. Research is conducted through interviews and data provided by industry managers such as: construction managers, and project managers from both industries. Is it the aim of this article, that the methodology provided is applicable in other industries too.

The key benefit for a project manager when planning an approach to meetings is that it identifies the approach to communicate most effectively and efficiently, both internal in the project team and with stakeholders. Developing a strategy for meetings can save the project time and costs and on same time keep project team members motivated.

Too many meetings fail

“Meetings are often unnecessary or badly run” claims the authors of “Kill bad meetings”. They support this statement with industry research, scientific studies and conducted by the authors themselves.

Unnecessary meetings: They’ve found that up to half of the content in meetings is not relevant to participants or could be delivered in other, more simple ways. Badly run meetings: many meetings that need to happen fail to deliver outcome effectively and does not encourage participation (kilde).

When investigating the truth in this statement similar examples from other sources show similar results: - In a study made by Microsoft 69% of the 38.000 participants felt meetings weren't productive [2] - People spend an average of 2 days per week in meetings and 50% of it is wasted [kill] - A 2012 survey by salary.com found "too many meetings” to be the #1 timewaster at the office, with 47% of votes, up from #3 in 2008 [salary.com]

The last analysis points towards that either the quality of meetings is worsening, or that the amount of meetings is increasing. A Harvard Business Review-article from 2016 “Collaborative Overload by Cross, Rebele and Grant” claims that over the last 20 years the time spent by people in collaborative activities (meetings, calls, emails etc.) has increased by 50% or more.

The effect of bad meetings are many and can turn into inhibitors in projects: - Meetings are huge costs in projects. Example: a managerial / professional person in Europe or the USA costs around $100,000 to employ (at 2017 prices). $40,000 of this is spent directly in attending meetings. Preparation for meetings is in addition to this, and internal meetings are also a major driver of business travel costs (kilde). In addition to this, time spent in meetings is also time not spent on individual work – many meetings and interruptions can postpone important tasks for an individual. - People attending meetings perceived as ineffective are affected at the end of the workday and it affects their overall job satisfaction. Employees feel stress, dissatisfied with their jobs and the study reveals that they are more likely to leave their job.“The Science and Fiction of Meetings” These two reasons are big challenges for a project manager. Reaching overall goals: deliver projects on time and under budget within scope is threatened and the risk increases when there is no control.

Causes for bad meetings vary, but general causes include: - In many project organizations, the whole field of “meetings” is unmanaged. Who call, run and attend meetings and how often is often not agreed. - Unmanaged meetings generate unmanaged costs. In the example earlier, more than 40% of one resource’s cost and time is spent in meetings. Is less than 60% time enough to manage / work individually on a project? - Today, development projects are becoming more complex within product and service development. Higher complexity often needs people with different specialties and big project organizations. This can also result in more unmanaged meetings. (reference for complexity: course lit)

Project phases

A project manager will manage meetings throughout the whole project. Some meetings such as a project status meeting or budget meeting can be recurring from beginning to end. Other meetings are only relevant in one phase and maybe only one time. It is important for the project manager to prepare properly for these meetings, in order to do that, the manager identifies the current challenges in relation to the overall project goal. A useful tool for this is to identify project phases.

Splitting up a project into phases allows management to plan and control progress throughout a project lifetime. A project phase consists of related project activities sharing a goal. Completing activities will strive towards reaching the goal and entering next project phase. Project phases can occur iteratively. In some cases, new findings occur in the executing phase which demands project team to make changes in scope and revisit the planning phase. There is no one-size-fits-all-model to describe project phases for every project. Projects are unique and various industries have various project models. However, most projects go through the following four phases:

Initiation - Define new project/new phase of existing project - Define initial scope and finances - Stakeholders that influence overall outcome will be identified - PM will be selected - Project charter/mission statement including business case needs approval to complete this phase

Planning - Scope is refined and objectives are found - Project (core) team is established - PM-plan and project plan are created - Shared documents and platforms within project are created including documents about: scope, time, cost, quality, communication, stakeholder engagement, risks, procurement, human resources etc. - Information related to project is gathered

Execution - Other project participants might be discovered - Work defined in plan made in previous phase is performed and completed, unless severe changes are discovered. In this case, there might be a need for an iteration back to the planning phase. - People and resources are coordinated, stakeholder expectations are managed, activites of project are integrated and performed in accordance with plan. Results requiring updates and needing to revisiting planning phase include: activity durations, pricing, unanticipated risks.

Closing Completing of project include: - closing contracts - Archive data - Closeout procurement - Evaluate and note learnings and reviews

Splitting projects up into phases does not mean, that phases are isolated internally. Phases occur most commonly sequential and are extremely interrelated due to project processes. Figure 3-3 from PMBOK shows how the various process group are related. A process group is a group of project management processes, all of them relevant to a specific part of the project, e.g. the initiating process group is a group of processes performed to "define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase." All groups can easily participate in one phase. Figure 3-3 shows an example of how the different process groups are related to each other and other project activities. Communication in this cluster of project processes is what makes the project progress, precise and accurate communication is key in a meeting.

Meeting strategies

In order to present the various meeting strategies, we distinct between meetings occurring throughout the whole project and meetings connected to a specific phase or event.

Meetings occurring throughout whole project (STG)

Based on industry research using a template for meetings to structure (agenda) and filling in minutes to keep track of progress seem to be a common effective method, that both works to steer the meeting topics and allows participants to follow the meeting timeline.

Before - Prepare a template for meeting minutes

During - Use template to structure meeting

After - Update template and send to participants

PICTURE: TBD. Example of template.

HBR-method:

A research study published in Harvard Business Review suggest a structured five step method to analyzing and changing meeting patterns:

1. Collect data from each person 2. Interpret the data together 3. Agree on a collective, personally relevant goal 4. Set milestones and monitor progress 5. Regularly debrief as a group

Meetings occurring in a single or several but not all phases (progress meetings)

Before

During

After

Limitations

- Cultural change: is your company ready? Time and money consuming to prepare (more) for meetings. - Team effort: it takes collective effort to change meeting norms. - Conflict with being the manager and meeting facilitator on same time: two different roles. Manager need to focus on other goals than waking people's attention in a meeting.