The traditional meeting format may be appropriate most of the time. But what if its not working for you?
There are many times when a round table, conference styled meeting is not appropriate - too formal, not focussed on one specific problem, too many people present, not enough time. Using an alternate format for the meeting may provide a solution to specific problems. Here are some examples:
Mary is responsible for overseeing the new inventory management software system. She needs everyone to attend an information session but the warehouse is flat out with customer orders and there is no time to bring everyone together. What is a good option for her to get these sessions done?
Lunch and learn has become a common phrase to describe an informative or training session conducted during a personnel lunch break. Mary could separate the team members into groups of 5 to 8 and invite them to a meeting room to have their lunch while she runs through the information session. With a team size of 40, that would allow her to complete the sessions in a week without impacting on the warehouse.
There is one sticky issue with lunch and learn - who pays for lunch? A good way to handle it is this:
- If the team are "giving up" their lunch hour to attend a mandatory session, then for management to pay for lunch (typically $8-10 per person), the total cost would be less than one hour of overtime for each team member...so providing lunch is a good idea.
- Lunch and learn sessions are often used for informal team training and are attended optionally. For these sessions team members should bring their own lunch.
John’s team are behind schedule on delivering a kitchen refit to a customer. They have a list of outstanding actions, but keeping everyone focussed on the list is proving hard. How can John communicate more effectively with the team without a meeting cutting into their time?
In this situation John should implement a "no chair" or "scrum" meeting. This type of meeting is typically used in two situations:
- Team deadlines - the short, regular meeting style keeps the team focussed on the day’s events; if you get today’s tasks done, then you are not behind when you come in tomorrow!
- Daily executive review - many larger corporations use this meeting each morning to recap any issues from the previous day, new actions for the current day and for the attendees to raise any issues proactively
The meeting is run in the following way:
- The same person leads discussion at each meeting; typically this would be the leading tradesman, a project engineer or the coordinator who manages the list of tasks
- All attendees stand; the meeting should take no longer than 15 minutes. If people sit they become comfortable and slow down the meeting. However, 15 minutes is not too long to stand and everyone stays more focussed.
- Each person presents to the meeting; generally three items are raised in short form - think verbal bullet points! For example:
- An item of concern not completed or that occurred yesterday
- The main activity for today
- Identifying a person shorthanded who needs help or a critical activity that remains unassigned
At the end of the meeting every person should know what they are tasked with doing and achieving for that day.
Pat’s plumbing business has a team of 20 who are on the road most of the day. The monthly team meeting has not been scheduled for two months because there has not been a time during the day when everyone is in the workshop. What can Pat do?
Pat’s best option is to schedule a meeting for first thing in the morning and ask the team to come in one hour early for the meeting. A morning meeting is good because everyone is fresh and the team probably comes in at least once a week to submit timesheets and other paperwork.
Some of the team may grumble about the extra hour. One option for managing that is to allow each team member to finish one hour early on one day during the subsequent month, in lieu of the meeting time. If a different team member finishes early each day, the impact on the business is minimal, and no one has been disadvantaged.
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