Make Meetings Better

thinks that meetings are a hellish time suck. In fact, it's a common theme on the ted Talk productivity Expert circuit. There's the moderator has no idea how to run the meeting. There are the participants have no idea why they're there. The whole thing kind of collapses into this collaborative train,

and meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things. During the day of work, the man your calls the meeting so the employees can all come together, and it's an incredibly disruptive thing to do to people because meetings aren't work. Meetings there are places to go talk about things you're supposed to be doing later. The average meeting, if you look at it um it goes too long. It's badly ran.

We spend about of our time collaborating with people, which makes it more and more difficult to get our work done. So we're doing too much of it and most of it has handled badly, but our meetings guaranteed to be terrible. Is there something we can do besides canceling all meetings altogether? I'm going to find out. This week on Works for Me, I make over the weekly team meeting. Hi, I'm Becca

Greenfield and I'm Francesco Et. Every week on Works for Me, one of us focuses on a real life work problem that she's having and try to solve it. That way, we can see if the solutions that productivity experts are selling will work for you. And this week it's Francesca's turn. Francesca, what productivity problem is preventing you from being your best work self? I want to get better at meetings. I go to a lot of meetings, I run a few meetings, and I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it right. So

what do you think you're doing wrong? I've set up so many meetings where I feel like people kind of shuffle in and they stare blankly while I talk and they maybe don't even think they should be there, and then I end up doing a lot of the talking just to Philly mp space. And I think if I were better at something like preparing people for the meeting or saying the right things in the meeting, then people would be interested and they would get a lot out

of it. So I want to learn the skills that make a meeting like that, which is hard because everybody hates meetings. Everyone's been on the other side where you're just like, why am I on this list of eleven DP people totally to talk about this abstract thing that nobody has explained to me, And it's just a meeting appointment that appeared on my calendar, and now I have to sit in the room and listen to somebody blather on, and I'm on my phone the whole time, like checking

my calendar and sending emails. Or there's the meeting where it's almost the opposite, where everyone feels like they need to participate to prove themselves, which again is useless in a different way. I really just the performative very popular in the journalism world. It's a performer. So that's another type of meeting that I think is bad. Are you a meetings person? Like? Do you generally? Are you one of those people who hates meetings? I know the answer

to this one. You love meetings. I like a good I like in person conversations, but I don't. I don't like meetings that are pointless. Right, who does you say you want to be better at meetings? So where are you going to start? There's one meeting I have that I think has gone pretty far off the rails. As you know, I'm the head of podcast here a Bloomberg, So I set up a regular check in where the small group of producers on my team can come in and share what they're working on, get updates from me,

and ask questions. It sounds useful to me. It should be, but it's just kind of blah. I don't think anyone really wants to be there. Sometimes, if somebody's out or if I'm just busy, I'll cancel the meeting. And when we do have it, I feel like I have to drag the team from their desks to the conference room and then it's this lackluster round table of updates. This is a meeting we recorded recently, and here's the vibe in the conference room when we all get together, all right, mangus,

why don't you start? Oh, does anyone happen in general announcements? Um? Right. The most exciting it gets is when we go way off track to talk about our personal lives or movies we like, which happens a lot. It's if you if you do end up liking someone, you either have to be like, okay, hours up, or you have to really contrive something to do, because trying to find something to do in New York City at three o'clock in the

afternoon on a Saturday is kind of hard. Yeah, you're definitely getting maximum engagement in the times that I don't think are really work related. Yeah, the banter um like what you just heard that that can go on for a while, or meetings supposed to be a half hour and it can go forty five minutes or an hour just with like that advanter. Yeah, I know I've been there. I've been in those meetings. Are you guys talking about where to go on a date in the afternoon? Just

wondering what I think. There was a conversation about like what young people do on dates these days, and there was a disagreement over weather coffee dates are okay or not. I've been on some coffee dates. I think coffee dates are fine. I'm not a fan. See if this were my team meeting, we'd be talking about this for a long time. This is why it happens because it's fun to talk about not work. Yeah, that's exactly the problem.

Like I'm I'm always down a chat and be social, But when nothing else meaningful happens in the meeting, I feel like I'm doing a bad job because it's my meeting. It makes me feel like a bad boss if I don't get us to actually follow through on the real purpose of the meeting, which is to keep everybody in foremants solve problems as they come up. So you want to create this perfect, engaging, meaningful, useful meeting that proves that you are the good boss that you are. So

how are you going to do that? There are a lot of solutions out there, So I'm going to talk to a bunch of meetings experts and enlist them to help me revamp my sad little team meeting. But first I need to diagnose the problem with this meeting. In particular. To do that, I'm going to talk to my team. My name is Magnus Henricson. My name is Toford for my name is Liz Smith Magnus. We have a weekly team meeting every Monday in Theory. Yeah all did lie?

I uh, I like it when it happens we don't have them enough, I guess I feel like we haven't had a meeting. I know we haven't. I guess that's kind of well, that's an issue with the meetings. They're inconsistent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I particularly love having a team meeting every week. We all have different projects that we're working on, and it's nice to come together and hear what other people are

working on. UM and then I think, just as a unit, there are a lot of questions that we have, and it gives us an opportunity to ask those questions and sort of put our heads together to answer those questions. It's a bit of a social event too. What do you think would make the meeting better? I think that making ourselves have it every week is step one. So the more consistency the better. I do feel sometimes that the question asked is so open ended, well, like what

do you have coming up? That sometimes I feel I don't It's hard to find a balance of what people need to know or not. I like hearing, you know, just going around the circles, seeing what everybody's up to and what they have coming down the pipeline. And it's a team obviously pretty important to literally work well together, but to kind of get to know each other and have a good social rapport. All right, thanks Liz anytime,

Thanks so for yeah, thank you anything else? Great, great job, thank you, thank you for coming in today, magnus, thank you. This a beautiful space. Have Yeah, I know. So my team doesn't hate this meeting. In fact, they value it enough to feel annoyed when it falls through the cracks. But they definitely have some complaints. There's a lack of structure, no one is sure how long it's going to go

and what they're expected to say. And honestly, the thing that they seem to like best about the meeting is that it's a time to goof often get to know each other and to your stories. Which might be a fun meeting, but it isn't necessarily an effective or productive one. And explain why you don't like the meeting, because I mean, you like it probably having fun too, But you're the boss and the situation and probably wants something to come

out of it. I can feel productive, right, I can see them enjoying the parts of it that aren't really relevant. And then I'm wondering, like if I'm doing a good job of manage it, and it's the point of the social hour, And now that you've gotten everybody's input, what is your next step. I'll spend a few weeks talking to experts and trying to design a whole new kind of meeting. The big payoff will be when I invite everyone to an all new, vastly improved weekly team chat.

And what will your measure of success be for this new and improved meeting. Basically, if my team says they like it better, I'll believe them and I'll call it a success. The first problem I tackled was the structure. Thing the producers had mentioned that our meeting well had none. I thought about one thing the meeting didn't have, and agenda. Serious meetings have agendas. They have memos or power point dex with a list of things to talk about. All I had to do was write one of those and

voila structure. Right. What it comes down to is what's on the agenda did you build this agenda by considering various viewpoints and perspectives? Are the items on the agenda truly strategic and items that couldn't be assessed, you know, or examined through just an email? Um? Do you involve others in the agenda? Meet Steve Rogelberg. I found Steve after talking to a lot of experts about the modern meeting, and he was the answer to my meeting prayers. He

wrote a book called The Surprising Science of Meetings. The great thing about Steve's book is that it tackles a lot of the conventional wisdom about meetings with data, and something his research found is that agendas are very often in a active So when we think about an agenda, so many leaders just think that if they've done an agenda,

they have succeeded. But when you actually analyze agendas that people use, the crazy thing is that probably are close to the time, it's the same agenda weekend and week out. What Steve saying is that agenda's only work if you thought deeply about whether each item on it really needs to be discussed at this particular meeting. And he's against coming up with agendas in a vacuum. He gave me the idea to ask other people in the meeting what they wanted to talk about and assign them a time

limit for each item. I knew all of that would help with giving the meeting a structure, but a little bit of structure isn't enough. I wanted structure on steroids for that. Steve has another trick. Make meetings forty eight minutes long exactly. I don't want leaders to see sixty minutes of some magical time that they really can think carefully about the time um that was needed to address

what they think they have on there. So decide how much time you think it will take, but then take five minutes off to kind of create some of that pressure. And I think that when a meeting leader is playing with the amounts of time, then it creates a curiosity. It makes it seem like something unique and special is happening. By slicing a small, highly specific amount of time off of that predictable sixty minute block, Steve's research shows you can keep people from falling into a lull and also

force them to stay on schedule. And if a meeting start time is very specific, people are more likely to assume there's a reason for it and to get their own time. So I sent around a meeting invitation with a start time of eleven twelve. Exactly what were people's reactions when they got Did they notice where they like this as a type of um, what am I going to do for twelve minutes between eleven and eleven twelve? There was a lot of intrigue about the eleven twelve

start time. I got a lot of comments about it and email and chat. So mission accomplished, right, right, that's what you want, an element of surprise them off. Okay, so you're really focused on the structure of the meeting as it's happening, keeping it on track. Were there are other problems that the meeting experts helped you solve? Yeah?

There was one other main problem that came up after I talked to the team and just from my own observations of the meeting, which was getting everybody excited about it. That meant getting people excited about the parts of the meeting that we're work related, not just laughing about like tender dates or funny things our kids did. Steve says that the meeting leader should think of themselves as the host of a party, someone making good use of other people's time. You have to be happy to be there

to create an atmosphere of positivity. Thinking about meeting leadership differently is really the most important first step in solving the meeting problem. The most effective leaders recognize that they are a steward of others time. The tactics, approaches, and processes that you choose are going to be different when you truly embrace your stewardship role. If I wanted everyone pumped and ready to talk about work, I needed to prepare ahead of time. Remember how Steve said I should

involve everyone in the agenda. I was going to do it in a way that got them excited. Two days before the meeting, I sent everyone an email that began this way, Hi, hope everyone's looking forward to tomorrow's team meeting as much as I am. Please do two things in advance of the meeting so that we can make the most of our discussion and ensure everyone's time and

efforts are valued. I continued the email by asking everyone to suggest an agenda item, warning them that they have five to seven minutes of a lot of discussion time, and then having them prepared to discuss highlight from the week, a long term issue, and an update on their work that week. I finished with a lot of exclamation points. Wow, I have never received an email like that about a meeting.

What were people's reactions? Yeah, this is not my normal email tone, so I expected a lot of like what the hell, Francesca. Well, it's also asking a lot of people to prepare for me, which usually you like a remember of a meeting in five minutes and show up. So nobody responded to the tone like nobody said Nobody pointed out that I sounded kind of crazy and overly happy and excited about the meeting or fake even um and everybody did actually put together what I asked them

by the deadline that I gave them. I'm em passed. People responded, good job, team. I mean, they could have just ignored it, and then I would have really been in a pickle because we would have had no collaborative agenda at all. So once I kind of like gathered together everyone's responses and adapted them to the format I was thinking about, I had enough for my awesome, dynamic agenda, but making the meeting exciting, productive, actionable that was going

to take more than just an agenda. I would have to work to keep their attention and interest throughout the course of the meeting itself. To spark joy and delight in each moment, I'd have to be a great wedding DJ basically find out how that goes. After the break, the day of the meeting had finally arrived. It was going to be structured and focused, fun and thought for poking.

It was a Thursday, not our usual day for the meeting, so as to disrupt our normal routine and inject some surprise into things, and it was nearing twelve minutes after eleven. I put store bought donuts and several cups of fruit salad from the drug store downstairs at the meeting table. Food Steve's research has found is the number one way

to get people interested in a meeting. I had more things placed strategically on the table, like a Rubik's cube and several jars of toy slime that people could fidget with. Steve had mentioned that the research supported using activities like these to stimulate thought and keep people from playing with their phones. Steve it also said that some leaders make their meetings fun using music. So I blasted I of the tiger as the three producers walked down. Hello, welcome

to the team meeting. Please help yourself to some fruit or donta enjoy fiddling with some of these nine and enhancing choys if you need something to do with your hands so as not to attempted to play with your phones. The rooms keeps already solved. Though you sound like you're trying so hard. It was I truly was to be like the MC of like a bought metzva that is a meeting and the kids are just not having it. I was my like amped up level was at around

eleven and they came in a four. Yeah, but just reasonable, fair meeting at eleven twelve on a Thursday. But I was the party host, so I had to act like it. So after everyone was settled and all this social engineering was done, I got the meeting started. Great first bullet on the agenda. For the rest of the meeting, I'm going to give you a short, short presentation. Once we started slogging through the agenda, the conver station slipped into the same rhythm we were used to, albeit a little

more organized and on topic. With one difference. Each agenda item was timed, so I had my eyes on the clock constantly. After all, we had a lot to fit in and only forty eight minutes exactly to do it in. And then I'll just like once I had recorded, I'll give you the low down. So many episodes, not like when we have a new show, like having themes for show. Oh yeah, the meaning seems to be moving along. Are are you stressed out because you have to keep your

eye on the clock though? Yeah. Completely. At one point, Liz wanted to talk about something that I had forgotten to put on the agenda, and so we had to go off script, and I was trying so hard to engage with the words she was saying, while being totally conscious that we were not strictly following the agenda. Oh that's unstressful. I mean, you're keeping the meaning on track,

but it's at the expensive your own engagement. But with all of this engagement and efficiency going on, I didn't want to lose the one thing about these meetings that everyone involved had said they enjoyed the opportunity to be social with their colleagues. So I scheduled five minutes at the end for a team bonding activity. It was around the holiday, so we picked names for a Secret Santa exchange. So we have up to four minutes for for fun times. Cool,

you guys, just pick. Don't think I got myself. Okay, everybody for back. Okay, everybody gets somebody else. Yeah, all right, we have to eat this, I guess. So alright Secret Santa gifts to end it next week Friday. Friday, we have like pizza or we were finally done, really great, really great meeting, guys. All right, bye, okay, Well that was that was that was the music for you to walk out on. Okay, So it seems like the over the top music can be next because mostly people made

fun of it. Yeah, and I didn't really have like the audio visual expertise to make sure that it was like fading in and out appropriately. I'm just I picturing a scene scenes from Arrested Development. Otherwise, the meeting sounded good to me, I think more importantly, how did you

feel about it? In the moment, I felt like really nervous about executing it well, and all of the timing stuff really threw me off, Like I didn't realize how much how difficult it was going to be to actually think about what people were saying when I'm keeping an eye on the clock. But we did keep on schedule and people did get to say what they had to say, So I guess in that respect it worked. Yeah, you're you're a master of ceremonies as well as a member

of the team. That's a lot to juggle. Yeah, well, the big question did your experiment succeed? Was the new and improved meeting any better than the old one? I talked to the team a second time to find out. Overall, I thought that it was a nice change to have some structure to our meeting. Um, so we have a specific time to get something done, and so we know

when we start, we know we're going to finish. We're now we're going to hit all the things and not get too off the beaten path, though there still was some time left for that at the end. So I feel like it encompassed everything that we could possibly need or want from a meeting. I thought it was good. It was obviously a kind of artificial atmosphere in parts

the music and the toys. See, I found the toys to be distract acting because, for instance, like the Rubik's Cube, I would start playing with it and then look at me like, oh no, wait, I just lost twenty seconds of the meeting um and then the slime. I think it made Magnus's hands smell for hours afterwards. I think of it in terms of, like, because I don't dread these meetings. I've been editorial meetings before. We're like, we do it every week and no one wants to be there,

and so I don't feel that way here. It already feels like not like high stakes. To me, it's already enjoyable and back and so like the music, I think just compliments that it makes me feel more relaxed. I don't think I checked my phone while I was in that meeting. Ok, Okay, you've got some positive feedback. I feel like that's a win. But also people definitely notice that some of it was contrived, so I don't think

that's great. Would you call it a success? You know, I'm going to call this one a win to Fir said he didn't pick up his phone, and Liz that she really liked the structure, and yeah, Magnus could tell that I was kind of acting and being over the top. But overall I do think they couldn't help, but like that someone had put this much effort in time and

thought into making an experience just for them. Yeah. I think people have this feeling that meetings are a waste of time, and when you make it feel like not a waste of time, people are going to leave feeling

better about the experience. There's always that fine line you have to walk between being so cheesy that people will be rolling their eyes and they'll be taken out of the experience by how silly it is and being excited enough and exciting enough that people are not going to just feel like, oh, this is, you know, a meeting

I can zone out of completely. Yeah. I think what I'm hearing a little bit is like the stuff that you're describing as cheesy is just kind of treats people like their kids who can't focus, and we need to engage them in these ways. But the things that engaged people in your meeting was you know, keeping people on track talking about actual work, and that's the stuff people appreciate. Yeah, I find people people are into working and doing their jobs well, and if you can make that part of

it fun, you don't have to invent smelly slime. And I think, to be honest, the person who most needed an attitude adjustment here was me like I had just kind of assumed that because I myself wasn't always getting the most out of this meeting, that like nobody else was, everybody felt the same way and we should just cancel it. But I was wrong, and I found out that my team really notices when the meetings fall off the calendar.

And you know, I learned from as cheesy as my but mitz for EMC Voice sounded, I learned that my outlook makes a difference. My team is interested in the meeting, so I should fully commit to it and be enthusiastic, start the meetings on time, and hold the meeting every week. I really like this new attitude of yours. Are you going to have this elaborate meeting every week now? No? Absolutely not. That is like way too much work for a weekly meeting that has four total people in it. Um,

I'm not going to do music. Maybe sometimes I'll do food, but I am going to try to make everyone think of something to talk about ahead of time and give them a set format that we kind of follow every week, and hold the meeting every single week whenever possible. Wow, I'm jealous of this meeting. Um, do you think it come really could be. I mean, I'm part of you. Would you like to give a guest presentation? Oh, that'd be good, good thing to Maybe I'll bring my own music. Anyway,

has this changed your outlook on meetings? Yeah, it sort of has. I think meetings are too easy to hate. They're just like such an easy target. Everyone goes after them, and a lot of them are boring and some of them are unnecessary. But like you said before, so much falls through the cracks when you try to communicate exclusively through email or chat, and people like talking face to face for a reason. In I think the trick is learning that conducting meetings is a skill in and of itself,

and it's a skill most of us aren't taught. Here's how Steve put it. There was a statistic that came out not too long ago that found I think it was of all leaders received no training on how to lead a meeting. I mean, that is a mind boggling statistic. You know, the meeting training has to go beyond just simple tactics and more about really kind of thinking about meetings from a much more strategic perspective. I like that those are some very wise word Steve. Anyway, I gotta go.

I'm late for our meeting. Thank you for saying that live that I scripted you to say. Next week on Works for Me, Becca goes hunting for a mentor first email. Here we go, presidentson see it's kinda scary. Thanks for listening to another episode of Works for Me. If you like our show, please head over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and take just a second to subscribe and rate or review us. It really helps get our

show in front of other people. If you have a workplace problem that you're trying to solve, we would love to hear about it. You can reach us at two on two six one seven zero one six. Leave us a boy smail we might use it on the show, or you can find me on Twitter. I'm at rs

Greenfield and I'm at Francesca today. This show was hosted and reported by Me, Francesca Leavy and Me back at Greenfield, and it was produced by Topah four Est Jordan's speared to be illustrations on our show page, which is Bloomberg dot com slash Works for Me Special. Thanks also to the other meetings experts I spoke to for this episode, including Bob Sutton and Patty McCord, and to our producers Magnus Henrickson, Liz Smith, and of course took for foreheads

for being a part of this episode. Francesca Levy is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts and we'll see you next week. Hi,