Meetings Management

Meetings are one of the most important driving forces of projects. On average, 11 million meetings take place each day in the United States. These meetings are used for example to share information on a specific subject, make decisions, provide updates, or brainstorm; activities that are inherent to project management too. However, 33% of meeting time is considered unproductive by the participants, and their average salary cost is $338 . Money and time are the two biggest constraints in a project: it is thus a necessity to keep meetings efficient and effective.

Throughout the lifecycle of a project, different types of meetings can take place. The project manager, with the possible help of a facilitator, must understand the difference between them: they serve separate goals and must be managed accordingly. For a meeting to be effective, the roles of each participant have to be clearly defined. It must be run through three stages: before, during, and after the meeting; each step necessitating appropriate preparation.

The digitalisation of the workplace is another challenge for meetings management. More and more, project teams are working in different places and time-zones. Companies, trying to reduce costs linked to travelling, are trying to use digital tools to implement meetings where participants do not meet in person. This requires additional planning for meeting managers, and changes of practices by project teams.

Why Is Meetings Management Important?

Meetings are a part of the daily life of millions of workers. They are indispensable for a lot of projects, and ideally help people be more efficient in their work. A study (Hall et. al) found that 97% of US workers from all levels of employment needed conditions that encourage collaboration to do their best work. However, studies have shown that meetings are often unproductive. First of all, they last longer than they should: 40% of meetings last more than 2 hours. This is due to a lack of organization (63% of the time, no agenda has been distributed before the meeting.

This is why these last few years, companies are investing in training for their employees on meetings management. Teams and managers can enrol the help of a facilitator. Their role is to provide necessary structure in meetings, thanks to their knowledge in group processes. They help plan the agenda and stir the discussions towards decision-making, but do not provide any content to the discussions themselves, and do not make decisions. While facilitators are traditionally outsiders in a team, their role can be played by a team member or leader.

Project managers can find some guidance from the project management standards, even though they do not provide enough information on their own: the British Axelos Standards provide little to no information on meetings, and the PMI Standards provide general guidance on meetings management, but no precise advice. However, PMI provides in its library precise guidelines and techniques for meetings management

Status Update Meetings

They are a very frequent type of meeting in projects: the goal is to align the team via updates on progress, challenges, and the next steps to be taken. They involve contributions from every participant that lead to group discussions. These meetings are effective when every member participates and contributes, so the facilitator must pay close attention to the repartition of speech. The frequency of these meetings is important: too few could mean the information is not properly shared; too many is a waste of time and money: the initiating, the planning, the executing (where the work gets done), and the closing. At the end of a phase, one or several deliverables are to be handed in. During these stages, meetings will take place. Although any type of meeting can be arranged at any moment, it can be useful to know globally where each type of meeting belongs within the phases of the project:

• Status update meetings will typically happen frequently during the execution phase, when the work is actually done and has to be followed. Those meetings can happen within a project team, or between project leaders and program or portfolio managers, for example.

• Information sharing meetings will be used to present a project and its advancement to a group, whether it be managers, clients, or stakeholders. These happen during every stage, but most likely at the beginning and end of a project phase.

• Decision-making meetings happen when important decisions must be made. It could be during the Initiating, Planning, or Executing stages of the phase.

• Problem solving meetings are more likely to happen while work is being done, that is to say during the planning or executing stages.

• Innovation meetings could happen during the first 3 stages of the process. However, they frequently happen during the initiating or planning phases.

• Team building meetings should happen regularly during the lifespan of a project, but they are often more efficient at the beginning of one, to create cohesion among a team.

Meeting Roles

Facilitator: Their role is to help define the meeting purpose and desired objectives for a meeting. They help create the agenda, guide the discussions and keep the meeting participants on track by asking key questions and reminding groups of their stated goals. They possess no necessary knowledge about the content of the meeting, and do not partake in the decisions. The higher the stakes or the number of participants, the better it is to use a professional or completely neutral facilitator. It can be useful to add the goal of each discussion next to the items: “for information”, “for decision”, or “for discussion”. Unless the meeting requires a lot of preparation, the agenda should not be sent more than 3 days in advance, otherwise it will be forgotten by the participants.

• Plan the meeting. The meeting leader or facilitator should know the order of the items and their objectives, the process techniques used for each discussion, the supplies needed for those, and the estimated duration of each discussion. It is however important to keep the agenda flexible and adapt it to the participants’ expectations too:

• Using video and not just audio transmissions: putting a face on a voice helps integrate the team, and prevents people from getting distracted.

• Keeping meetings for important information-sharing and decision-making: all other information can be sent out in advance to be studied by the meeting participants, and mentioned in meetings only if participants need clarifications.

• Sending out a very detailed agenda allows everyone to get prepared ahead of the meeting, and clarifying their own opinions on the subjects.

• The meeting leader or facilitator should try to make the team feel connected, for example by starting the meeting with a round up of the participants’ feelings and state of mind, personal or professional.

• Every participant has to be focused on the meeting, and going “mute” or doing several things at the same time is not advised. To do this, the meeting leader can randomly ask participants for some insight on a subject, or stop regularly and ask if everyone is following.

• Get immediate feedback from the participants, to improve future meetings.

These actions are a basis for implementing virtual meetings, but they are still quite a new concept that often proves difficult to deal with for teams.

Organizational Changes

Moreover, even though theoretically it looks simple to run an efficient meeting, some organizational challenges can arise.

• First of all, although one of the staples of meetings is free communication and equality, it is in practice very difficult for people to completely forget their status inside a group: meeting leaders must find ways to work around that, and to really facilitate speech