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  • Writer's pictureJim Khong

Running meetings - what you do before

Updated: Oct 2, 2022



I think there have been many articles about how to run meetings, and other than just a few tips on how to prepare for it and some on writing minutes but they do not focus on what you do before and after the meeting. So, let me avoid the meeting itself and be contrarian to share tips with you on what to do before and after the meeting to maximise productivity of the meeting.


This is the first of two articles. What you do after the meeting follows. While this is written from the perspective of the organiser of the meeting, it also gives useful recommendations if you are just an attendee - helps to avoid that nap in an uncomfortable meeting room chair.


Why are you having the meeting?

Often, it is good to think about what you want to achieve at the meeting. Do you even need the meeting? If the meeting is just to inform everyone about something, then it is a briefing, not a meeting and can be done just as effectively by circulating a memo, file, e-mail etc.


Is this a regular meeting or an ad-hoc meeting? The former normally has set protocols and pre-determined reporting templates, which you will need to use and amend as you see fit, but please get input before changing anything. Often, people can be suspicious of changes, sometimes with good reasons, so ensure you can explain the benefits of the changes that you propose, particularly if you are a newbie at an established meeting.


The latter needs a lot more thinking. I find it best to couch the objective as a question. What do you want answered before you let everyone out of the room? That should be on the whiteboard when attendees enter the room. Perhaps the entire list of items in the agenda to be discussed should be worded as questions. This helps to focus the discussion rather than leaving the attendees feeling satisfied that they have achieved the purpose of the meeting just because they discussed the item on the agenda. A specific question also helps attendees determine their involvement in the meeting (and get you more meeting acceptance confirmations) than if they were just considering a vague topic header.


Whatever the type of meeting it is, consider consulting the key stakeholders on why you are having the meeting and how best to achieve your objectives. I always try to engage my stakeholders in informal meetings instead of leaving fate to chance and hoping to manage any surprises during the formal meeting itself. So, no surprises. A reputation for surprises often mean your stakeholders arrive at the meeting in alert mode, ready to pounce on any perceived threat to their department using a handy public meeting as the grandstanding stage. I often find adversarial stakeholders more amenable if there is no audience and they feel more respected when I approach them.


What do you discuss?

There will always have to be at least three items on the agenda. Always.


The first item is always confirmation of the minutes of the previous meeting. If this is the first meeting, then an introduction of what the meeting (or series of meetings) is required, what it seeks to achieve, etc.


If there are minutes, then you need to go through Matters Arising, usually a separate item on the agenda. Matters Arising basically runs through the minutes for any outstanding items due by this meeting. This is why we have columns for PIC (Person in Charge) and Dateline in minutes - makes it easy to pick up the items to be discussed. Not running through Matters Arising in a methodically means no follow up and often leads to having to repeat the entire discussion at a subsequent meeting.


The body of discussion items follows. If it is a standard regular meeting, then there should be a standard agenda, with an additional heading for ad-hoc items so that everyone is clear that these are the non-regular items. As mentioned, in a non-regular meeting it may be good to present each agenda item as a question.


The last item on the agenda is Any Other Matters. This is for announcements that will take less than a minute with no discussion, or for items that arose too late to be included in the agenda when it was sent out. I sometimes see items listed under Any Other Matters, usually because they not part of the regular agenda. If they can be listed, then they should be under ad-hoc items. If the item arose late, it could verbally introduced by the meeting organiser, preferably notified at the beginning of the meeting to allow time for attendees to arrange for information or technical support from their departments before the discussion.


It is always good to end the agenda with a proposed time slot for the meeting. This allows any critical attendee to request for a different date when everyone is still present at the meeting rather than trying to reschedule a meeting by email.


When are you scheduling the meeting?

Of course, you need to have a culture of starting meetings punctually. If there is a critical attendee, check the diary appointment that attendee for the time slot before your meeting to ensure there is ample time for a break and/or travel to your meeting. In this age of zoom meetings, it may be a good idea to offset meetings start time by 10 minutes past the hour (eg., 4.10pm): this is to allow attendees a short break as they flip from one meeting screen to the next. The psychology seems to be that it is easier to aim to end the meeting on the hour instead of at 3.50pm. We used to walk from one meeting room to another, popping by the pantry or restroom along the way - that used to be our break between meetings, and we lost that in zoom meetings.


If you review the agenda, you will often find that not all items involve everyone. It may sometimes be possible to arrange the agenda so that items involving particular attendees are discussed consecutively, allowing attendees to be released when discussing items where they are not involved. Or they can arrive after the meeting discussed the item they are not involved - this will require some simple logistical arrangement to call them partway through the meeting. This is common during corporate steering committee meetings discussing multiple projects involving separate project managers. Often, items of common interest are discussed first with uninvolved attendees released when discussing specific interest items, sometimes separate groups leave at different times as the agenda progress. It is even possible to arrange the main body of discussion in mid-meeting with only some attendees required before that and leaves after the main discussion to make way for new attendees. This hopefully minimise a situation where a lengthly discourse ensues between only three persons while the rest of the room either gaze on with blank looks or have their heads buried in their smartphones, wishing they were somewhere else more comfortable.


Who do you invite?

There are three categories of attendees: Members, In attendance, By invitation. The differentiation is critical for the smooth running of the meeting as it clarifies the role of each person and why they are there at the meeting.


Members are decision-makers of the meeting. Sometimes they are formally or legally designated, like directors in a board meeting. Otherwise the chairman will play the main role in deciding who are the decision-makers at the meeting. This is important to avoid gridlock, common at non-regular meetings like those of steering committees, which sometimes hold protracted discussion over an input by an attendee, who ended up being overruled anyway because they do not carry weight.


There can only be one member from each department or division. Basically, if your boss is there, then your boss is the member. That member should be the only person from that department or division present but may very occasionally invite somebody to provide technical support for a specific very technical explanation. If a member constantly require a down-liner to be there (or horrors: I have seen subordinates three or four levels down attending meetings alongside the boss), I will have to ask whether the department/division head deserves their salary. The only exception where the reporting line is administrative only and the person has an independent role, eg. auditors, legal counsel. I was in a company where the culture was that "we pay you a manager's salary, so act like a manager". If you think about it, the meeting is to guide the chairman and the members to arrive at a course of action - at that level: something is badly wrong if the CEO is interested in something the department head cannot provide without the presence of a subordinate.


If a key decision-maker is unable to attend, either the meeting is postponed or the absent member empowers a fully briefed subordinate to make decisions. The chairman may have to accept that often, empowerment may not be complete and that the subordinate may still need to the revert for guidance from the superior if the final proposal falls outside predetermined parameters. In this case, forbearance is required for the representative to be popping out of the room for such urgent guidance, an exception to the no-calls rule during a meeting. The meeting time slot may also have to adjust to suit the availability of critical members to be on call for such guidance, if not their presence. To insist that any representative is deemed empowered to make decisions by virtue of their attendance often backfires when smart department heads send no representative or send someone so obviously lacking in seniority, knowledge and/or experience that no other attendee wants to load such junior personnel with the responsibility of the decision.


In attendance are people required for every meeting by default but are not decision-makers. They often include those who actually run the meeting for the chairman - the chief internal auditor in an audit committee meeting or the project manager at a steering committee meeting, plus their teams to help write minutes or handle meeting logistics.


By invitation refers to those invited to attend just that meeting because their input is required by that day's agenda. For instance, the CEO may want to query the team lead who did the investigation, instead of the department head who only have second-hand knowledge. People should not be invited to "know what we decided at the meeting" - that can be achieved with well written minutes or separate briefings/meetings to execute the decision. Neither should they be invited "just in case you are needed" - either they rely on minutes or an existing attendee represents them, eg., corporate PMO representing all project managers even if the projects managers do not report to the PMO - but that only works if there is sufficient trust involved.


If your organisation have achieved a high level of maturity in project management, perhaps you can consider including a variation of a RACI table in the meeting invite, perhaps even for each item on the agenda. This means your invite is customised for each attendee. This will help the department heads to estimate the level of discussion at the meeting and thus determine the appropriate level of representation from the department, including whether the department need even be present: if the level of trust exist, they may ask the meeting organiser to represent their interests and inform them accordingly. Sometimes, sending out a RACI table enables department heads confirm the meeting organiser's understanding of the department's involvement in the issue at hand.


How are you going to run the meeting?

Strange but I often aim to write the minutes before the meeting. It helps to clarify what I expect to happen during the meeting and visualise how it should pan out. Call me a control freak, but this visualisation enables me to anticipate potential conflicts/miscommunication during the meeting, which I can then mitigate. Basically, no surprises. Identify your issues and risks before the meeting, not during and your meeting will be faster, & less stressful.


I often have informal meetings to prepare for the meeting - yes, it a pre-meeting meeting. Something informal, like quick word at the pantry or a chat at their table to understand the issues or brainstorm options. If I am able to get agreement on the course of action before the meeting, the meeting just formalises the decision with the aim of putting everyone on the same big picture. It also allows the meeting to focus the inter-departmental issues at the meeting instead of viewing the issue from the lens of their department if they are seeing the issue for the first time at a public meeting.


Pre-filling the minutes also allows for the minutes to be circulated faster as all the designated scribe needs to do is to update the minutes for the actual discussion during the meeting itself - the frame of the document and most of the points are already there, only the unanticipated discussions/decisions remain to be documented. This way, we often are able to circulate minutes within an hour of the conclusion of the meeting. Sometimes, my scribe would realise a discussion/decision was inadequate when struggling to word it during the meeting and it is easier to reopen the discussion while everyone was still there rather then realising it when sitting at our desk after hours two days later, trying to remember who said what and whether a certain decision was complete or not.


Where do you sit?

No, I am not dictating who sits where, but non-regular meetings where sitting arrangements are not yet set, chair's preference takes priority. Sometimes, people have preference where they sit in certain meeting rooms - near the screen, the far end from the screen, etc. The organising team should be seated next to the chair. These places should therefore be 'booked' early before any other attendees enter, often unsure where to sit.


I had a boss, who would sometimes arrive early in the client's meeting room to direct where he wanted to sit and where I should sit based on where he anticipated the client would sit: he wanted to be at the right vantage point to observe the client's reaction when I presented something contentious which the client hasn't been prepared for. Very smart man.


If there is a choice of rooms when I conduct job interviews, I often prefer those with small round glass top tables where I can see the legs. No, it is not a fetish. The position of a person's legs often tells a lot about their level of stress or confidence, information useful to gauge for positions with high level of human interactions.



Let's be clear the standard by which all meetings will be measured: to achieve the objectives of the meeting with the minimal number of people in the minimal amount of time, and hopefully, with the minimum amount of agro. Investing the time and effort before the meeting helps to achieve that. Kind of like a stitch in time saves nine. Would be happy to hear your tips too.

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