Fresh Meet: Make Strategy Sessions More Productive

Tired of mind-numbing meetings? These tips will help you add energy and value to your gatherings.

Summer days don’t necessarily mean lazy days. Even though your business may slow down during the next couple of months, that doesn’t mean you have to. This is the perfect time to think about how you can improve your skills as a manager. That way when business picks up in the fall, you’ll be able to make the most of it.

By Louise Witt

http://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbusiness/answercentral/0,15704,663148,00.html

One way you can improve your management skills is to learn how to run effective meetings. Unfortunately, managers and employees alike dread meetings. And who can blame them? Most meetings are boring and unproductive. But being able to run meetings is critical to your business’s prospects, says Patrick Lencioni, author of "Death By Meeting," (Jossey-Bass, 2004). "Meetings are at the heart of every great company," he says.

Lencioni is the founder of The Table Group, a consulting firm in Lafayette, Calif., whose clients include Charles Schwab, Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Bank of America. In his book, Lencioni suggests better ways to schedule and structure meetings and make them engaging as well as worthwhile. He spoke with FSB.com on the value of conflict, the need for clear agendas, and how small-business owners can hold meetings that actually benefit their companies.

Why don’t people like meetings?

It’s not a problem with meetings, but with the people who lead them. Most hold boring meetings that don’t keep people’s attention. Managers will hold a single, big meeting once week to talk about tactics, strategies, corporate culture, and their competitors. People don’t know whether they’re coming or going. They don’t know if they should be brainstorming, listening, or taking notes. A lack of context makes the meeting boring.

What makes a meeting less boring?

Conflict. Passionately debating issues and ideas will make a meeting interesting. There’s plenty of fodder for conflict, but because most leaders don’t like conflict, they keep their meetings calm and peaceful. That kills the very thing that keeps people interested. And if conflicts are kept under the table, then they will come out when people talk in the hallways and in other back channels.

So conflict is good?

All great companies have it. Intel’s meetings were full of it. Andy Grove encouraged it. So did Jack Welch. Small companies have an advantage because they’re closer to their customers. Fundamentally, meetings are places where people gather information that leads to them to make decisions. Small companies can be nimble and flexible. But if their meetings are boring, then they are giving away one of their key competitive advantages.

Should mangers use e-mail to conduct meetings?

A five-minute meeting prevents two weeks of e-mails going back and forth. This is where small businesses have a huge advantage over big ones. They can have more face-to-face meetings and be really productive. If they use e-mail instead, then they’re mimicking big companies that have to do that because they have offices and employees around the world.

What are common mistakes?

If managers have a meeting to discuss tactics to achieve short-term goals, then they should be disciplined and stick to that. If someone brings up a strategic idea, they should not let the meeting become derailed. They can set up another meeting to brainstorm strategies. There’s confusion when the conversation switches from talking about the tactical issue of how to achieve goals to the strategy issue of questioning those goals. Meetings shouldn’t talk about expense report policies, acquisitions of other companies, the holiday party, and rebranding.

What’s a simple step a manager can take to fix this?

Have clarity. The leader should have a hook in the beginning of the meeting. It’s similar to what a screenwriter does in a movie. Give them a reason to care. If you don’t do that in the first ten minutes of the meeting, then they’ll check out, even if they’re nodding their heads. The job of a great leader is to explain: Here’s why we are here today, here’s what we have to get done, and here’s what will happen if we don’t. A CEO has to make them understand that their decisions really matter.

After you clarify the purpose of the meeting, then mine for conflict. Determine what people might disagree on an issue and pull it out of them. Draw out a good healthy debate. That keeps everyone interested and puts all the right issues on the table. Next, drive for closure. That doesn’t mean ending the meeting on time. If it ends early, that’s fine. If it has to go longer, then have an intermission and come back later. The purpose is to have resolution.

Louise Witt is a writer based in Hoboken, N.J. She has written extensively on small business and entrepreneurship. E-mail her your questions at [email protected].