Escape From the Planet of the Meetings (1).

Meetings can be a blessing or a curse, loved and hated by folks according to their nature and/or current workload, but most of our feelings around meetings stem from how well facilitators run those that we are required to attend.  There is nothing worse than sitting through a [bea|mee]ting, where the goals are unclear, where opinions stand in for facts, and/or where the proper participants are missing or worse, not doing the talking. Double the frustration for every project sitting on your desk or in your inbox while you are sitting through one.

At the same time, a well-run meeting – whether a brainstorming session, a design studio effort, or a daily stand up – can (and should) have people walking out fired up for the rest of the day.  There is a continuum of meetings across the spectrum from good to bad, with a plethora of criteria discriminating between them.  The keys to a great meeting are more about what happens before the meeting itself, and even before it is scheduled, if at all.

People Purpose & Principles

Can you visualize a movie of the perfect meeting? The one where an agenda was circulated well before the meeting time, and everyone who needs to be there shows up on time.  People are ready to start at the appropriate moment and the person running the meeting is completely prepared. Someone is taking notes, so everyone else can focus on the “Content” of the meeting. The purpose of the meeting is clear to everyone in the room, and is confirmed in some form of opening statement. Everyone understands why they need to be present and is eager to contribute. Any tool that is needed just works flawlessly, whether it’s the Skype connection or just the whiteboard markers being full of inky goodness. Meeting principles are well established, and are part of the company culture: The team is working from an agreed upon set of Facts, calling out and unpacking Assumptions, and moving toward a common visible Objective. Minds are open, and people speak without interrupting each other or holding side conversations. Extraneous topics are deftly captured in a ‘parking lot’ so they can be acknowledged offline, but not allowed to derail the primary goal. If the meeting is long, there are breaks every 90 minutes to maintain focus and attention. When the meeting is finished, the team walks out motivated and clear on everyone’s next steps. Minutes are published so anyone not present but interested can keep tabs on the proceedings. Follow ups and accountability points are visible to everyone. When asked about the meeting later, attendees rave about how awesome it was and how much got done. Yay!

Okay…the length of that paragraph strongly conflicts with what I know counts as “readable”. But the essence of the single-stream-of-consciousness meeting as it flows by is something I have been striving to reach over the course of much of the past decade.

Yes – you can model great meetings, but over time things will erode, get stale, and everything needs a boost.  Your meetings need some flow.  Some fun.

How to establish the Flow

Gamers and game designers know that between the states of boredom (too easy) and anxiety (too hard) there exists the state of Flow. Flow is where things happen in a different continuum of time. You know the feeling, whether while reading a great book, or working on solving a challenging problem, or while on a long bike ride or hike in the woods.  Time passes differently, as seemingly the state of our mind has turned off that part that acknowledges or measures the rate at which seconds tick by. Our internal chronometer is switched off, we turn away for a moment and a pot of water is boiling when we look back. Magic.

So what does this have to do with meetings?  Well lots, actually. I propose that the more fun we make our meetings, the better they will flow, and vice-versa. The ideal meeting movie I described above is many things – comedy and thriller, action and documentary.  And movies are like epic games, with characters, challenges, and goals.

So we want to find a way to bottle that, and bring it to our meetings. I’ll explore that in the second part of this post.