MACIZO DEL DESEADO

• When to Call a Meeting • The Meeting Agenda • Meeting Pitfalls • Types of Meetings

Just about everyone involved in the Web development industry will tell you the same thing: They have spent too much time in pointless, badly managed, and

needless meetings. Spending time in a hot conference room talking about nothing in particular is a mind-numbing experience, but the mismanaged meeting syndrome perseveres. Project managers need to know how to run good meetings that do not waste the team's time and the client's money. There are some very simple rules you can use to run effective meetings where the attendees leave feeling like progress was made and action items were created. It's a good feeling to run a successful meeting that engenders confidence from the team and client. It's an awful feeling to be faced with a hostile group of people or an angry client because you called yet another needless meeting.

Besides being one of the major communication tools at the project manager's disposal, meetings are a chance for project managers to spread their wings and demonstrate authority. If you can run effective meetings that move along quickly, get things accomplished, and allow for constructive communication, you will be doing your part to improve the project management culture in your company and to establish your reputation as a leader.

Why Are We Here?

Why do people call meetings when they really have nothing to talk about? Calling agenda-less meetings is a common management blunder. As project manager you will be responsible for scheduling many meetings, so try not to abuse this

responsibility. You don't need to call a meeting for every little issue that pops up. Always strive to use alternative communication methods to solve problems other than calling a meeting. When faced with an unexpected issue or challenge, such as a sudden change request from the client, curb the urge to call a meeting. Use the

method prescribed for people with anger management problems: Take a deep breath and count to ten. Do you really need to assemble the team to solve the issue, or can the issue be handled via e-mail or just visiting someone's cubicle? The

surest way to expose yourself as a novice or as an overreactive manager is to call too many meetings or call meetings without a focused agenda.

KEY POINT

The number one rule for meeting facilitation is to have an agenda. Without a clear, focused agenda you will be wasting people's time and eroding your credibility.

Keep in mind that your peers must attend other meetings throughout the day, such as department meetings, performance reviews, and strategy sessions. Remember, your job is to enable productivity for your team. Scheduling them into too many meetings is a surefire way to kill productivity, not enhance it.

Table 7.1 shows some common situations that crop up and which require a meeting and which do not. Try to liken these examples to circumstances you currently face. The Agenda Is Your Road Map

Remember the Boy Scout motto and "be prepared." Your Scouting days may be over, but that doesn't mean you can go into meetings unprepared, and in this case, unprepared means no agenda. Even if the agenda has only one item on it, taking the time to write this down shows you are thinking of the group's time. The

purpose of an agenda is to focus the meeting and keep everyone on track. It's the road map for the meeting and will keep the conversation from going astray. Your agenda will be derived from whatever issue you want the team to discuss, clear up, or resolve. Know what you want to accomplish ahead of time instead of calling the meeting with a vague idea in mind and hoping your team will pick up your slack.

Table 7.1. Recognizing When a Meeting Is Required

Circumstance

Meeting Required:

Y/N Alternative Solution

resulting URL for the Web site must be established. The system administrator,

developer, and business owner all must agree on the URL structure so the path can be created.

require a meeting because of the various groups involved, it doesn't. Common tasks such as this one can be handled via e-mail.

The client just called and wants to change the background color on the home page.

No Speak to the designer or

creative director working on the project and get a mockup

made with the new background color. Send the mockup to the client for approval and move on.

Unsubscribing users from your fantastic new Web subscription service requires three separate procedures performed on two databases. Customer service, the application development team, and the business owner are arguing over who owns this responsibility from start to finish.

Yes In a case like this where process is in question and competing factions are taking up positions, call a meeting, establish the process, and settle the dispute.

The e-commerce portion of your Web site is going to be outsourced. The business development team has three deals on the table and has asked you to evaluate the three candidates from a tech

perspective. You have prepared a brief on each candidate and would like to make your recommendation.

Yes This situation could be handled by simply e-mailing your briefs to the business development people with your

recommendation. However, there are bound to be

questions about your findings, which could result in a slew of e-mails between yourself and the business folks. It would be best to call a meeting to settle the issue.

The scope of the meeting will dictate the scope of your agenda. If the meeting is to brainstorm a solution for a particular problem, the agenda may have only one item.

If the meeting requires input from every group involved in the project, such as a postmortem, the agenda could be complex.

Stating the agenda is the most effective way to begin meetings. Be sure everyone understands the topics on the agenda and how the meeting will be conducted. By stating the agenda at the outset, you can set the tone for the meeting and focus everyone's attention.

At the very least your agenda should include the following items. • The primary purpose of the meeting

• The meeting topics and in what order they will be addressed

• Who will be addressing each topic or at least speaking first on the matter • How much time will be spent covering the various topics

• What deliverables and action items should come from the meeting

If there are many items on your agenda, make copies of it for all attendees. This is a good practice even if there are only a few agenda items. It demonstrates your professionalism and will provide everyone with a road map for the meeting. It's also a good practice to send your agenda out to all attendees ahead of time. If you are using MS Outlook to schedule your meetings, you can write up the agenda in the invite e-mail, but it's better to attach it as a Word document.

Participation Is Key

Not everyone who attends your meeting is going to be relishing the opportunity to participate. It can be frustrating for the person conducting the meeting or speaking to feel like not everyone assembled is interested in being there or is engaged in the discussion. It is fair to assume that if a person has been invited, they will be

expected to participate. However, this is not always the case. Here are some reasons why people are reluctant to participate in meetings.

• There is not a clear agenda for the meeting, or it was not stated from the outset.

• Some people do not feel comfortable speaking in groups. • They may not have "bought in" to the meeting topic or project.

• Some people feel like their contribution will be ignored by their peers or management.

• The group has not worked together before, and a sense of trust has not been established.

A skill you will quickly develop is how to elicit participation from everyone (or nearly everyone) in the group. There are some simple things you can do to draw reluctant participants out of their shell. The first and most important thing you can do is to be sure everyone understands and is interested in the agenda. Once you state the agenda out loud and describe what you hope the "takeaways" or action items will be, ask the group if they agree. Look around the table and make eye contact with everyone assembled to be sure they heard and understood the question. By making eye contact with everyone there you are signaling to them that you are expecting their participation.

After you have agreement from the group as to why you are all assembled, thank the group for giving up some of their time to attend. Rarely are people thanked or acknowledged for attending meetings and giving up an hour that could have been used on completing tasks. Finally, before the meeting begins, you can mention to the group how important everyone's participation and input will be to solving the issue at hand. People like to be acknowledged for their expertise and talent, especially publicly. A simple statement like "You were invited to this meeting because you are the experts in this area, and I know we can come up with an excellent solution for …" will go a long way toward setting the right tone for the meeting.

Some people recommend breaking the ice before diving into the meeting topics. Taking time to perform an ice-breaking activity like introducing yourself to the people sitting to your left and right can get the conversational juices flowing, but they can also be risky. Side conversations could develop that do not stop when it's time to begin working through the agenda. You should use your best judgment with regard to what ice-breaking activities you choose to perform and how much time you devote to them. If the meeting is a kickoff meeting or is attended by a group of people who have never met, ask everyone to introduce themselves and describe their role in the project.

What to Do When the Fur Starts to Fly

When the pressure is on and critical decisions have to be made quickly by a disparate group of experts, there are bound to be conflicting points of view. It's natural and expected and, most importantly, healthy. Everyone wants to contribute and do a good job, but in tense situations some people believe their idea or solution is the only correct one. Usually a debate ensues that is also important and healthy. How else can the best decision be made if the issues involved cannot be debated? Opposing views are a good thing, and it's the group's job to choose the best one.

However, as the person conducting the meeting you have to be on the lookout for a healthy debate becoming an unhealthy argument. It happens. People in this

business are passionate about what they do and can be very turf conscience. Be on the lookout for behaviors such as these.

• An overly aggressive tone • Personal attacks

• Withdrawn and silent behavior

• Speaking over someone else; not letting others finish their sentences • Aggressive body language

• Assigning blame

When conflict arises in a meeting, you must remain neutral. Your credibility is founded on your resistance to taking sides. You also need to stay calm when the fur starts to fly. If you also lose your cool, the chances of reeling in the meeting and calming hostile emotions are greatly diminished. Try to get people to focus on the facts, not on each other. Remember: You are all there to solve a problem, and doing so will benefit everyone.

Here are some steps you can take when your meeting begins to resemble a battle scene from Planet of the Apes.

• Be assertive. This does not mean join in the fray, but change your tone of voice to get people's attention and rein in the situation. Only allow one person to speak at a time, and remind the group to stay on the topic. Tell them emphatically that getting personal will not be tolerated.

• Slow the pace of the discussion. If the situation is heating up and opinions are flying fast and furious, ask the group to pause for a moment so you can catch up on the discussion and ask the person speaking to summarize her point.

• Do not tolerate rudeness. As soon as someone in the group makes an off- color or rude remark, do not hesitate to call them on it. It's your job to keep the group on track, and insulting remarks only serve to derail people's

attention. Tell the person who made the remark to please refrain from

inappropriate comments no matter how much they think they are warranted. • Call off the meeting. When things get out of control or are well on their way

to becoming out of control and any hope of productivity is out the window, halt the meeting. Tell the group it's time to stop until everyone calms down and clearer heads can prevail.

When meetings begin to spin out of control and emotions are raw, it's very easy to dive into the mix and kick up a little dust of your own. Don't do it. This moment will pass, and you and your team still have a long way to go before you finish the project. You need to maintain everyone's respect throughout, and nothing helps your credibility and position like effectively managing a dicey meeting where the chips are down and emotions are high.

Meeting Pitfalls

Your peers on the job are professionals just as you are, and it's probably safe to say they have a good grasp of basic social skills. However, everyone forgets their

manners occasionally, and not everyone is socially adept in all situations. Here are a few meeting pitfalls you may encounter.

• Mismanaging the clock. If you have a lot to cover and one hour to do so, keep a close eye on the clock. If the meeting becomes snagged on a single topic, halt the conversation and suggest a new meeting be scheduled to cover that topic. Remind the group there are a lot of other topics to get through on the agenda.

• The hijacked meeting. Often two or three people in the group will latch onto a topic and run with it. This will leave the rest of the group doodling, staring at their hands, or glaring at you. When this occurs, ask the people hogging the conversation to "take it offline" so the meeting can continue. Use an assertive tone; they'll get the message.

• The personal agenda. Similar to the hijacked meeting is the attendee who chooses to ignore the stated meeting agenda but instead insists on changing the topic of discussion to something they want to talk about. Don't let this person get away with this side-tracking technique. Politely cut them off with a comment like "That's an excellent point, and we should schedule some time to talk about that issue. However, today we have to cover the agenda items we discussed at the beginning of the meeting."

• The expensive meeting. Does the HTML intern really need to be sitting in a design meeting? Meetings can get very expensive for your client when you invite people who are not absolutely required. As project manager you

should be on top of all the details and able to answer questions and cover for a resource who may not be in attendance. Giving good service means

watching out for your client's well-being. Save them money when you can, and they'll have that much more to spend on future projects.

• The insidious side conversation. It's often tempting when stuck in a boring meeting to begin a conversation with the person sitting next to you. If you

are facilitating a meeting and observe a side conversation, shut it down by clearing your throat or catching the eye of one of the side-conversationalists. You don't have to be obnoxious about it; you're not the meeting police, but there should only be one conversation going at a time.

• Bad scheduling. Scheduling meetings around everyone's busy day is always a challenge. However, there are some times it's best to avoid, like early

Monday mornings, late Friday afternoons, and during the lunch hour. Lunch meetings tend to become more about the food than the topic, and not much work gets done. Who can concentrate on the marketing plan for a Web site when you're eating egg salad?

Being aware of these common meeting pitfalls and how to deal with them will make you a star meeting facilitator in your organization and enable your team to maximize their time.

Common Project Meetings

The following sections describe several types of standard meetings you will call regularly during the life of a project.

Kickoff Meetings

Kickoff meetings should be lively affairs. The average project has at least three kickoff meetings: the project kickoff, the design kickoff, and the tech kickoff. Kickoff meetings are a chance to get the team pumped up about the project and share their enthusiasm with the client. Kickoff meetings set the tone for the project, so be sure to keep them focused and upbeat.

Before the project kickoff meeting, you should already have a first draft

specification and timeline. These materials will be handed out at the meeting. The project kickoff meeting is a chance to cover the goals of the project, the

expectations, the communication plan, and the larger milestones in the project. Review the spec with the group and ask if there are any questions or comments. This exercise is more about saying to the team, client, and yourself, "We are