The Key to Worthwhile Business Meetings
by Ram Charan

Posted on Wednesday, February 14, 2007, 12:00AM

Say you run a small technology company. It serves multiple customers who require a steady stream of customized new technologies, and at the same time demand uncompromised quality and delivery of existing products.

Imagine that those customers want their solutions customized -- and, by the way, they can't predict how much they'll need of each component until the very last minute. How would you keep your engineers focused on the projects that are needed most?

Meetings Don't Have to Drain

If you were Eric Creviston, corporate vice president of North Carolina-based RFMD, you'd conduct frequent meetings. Not the kind that interfere with the real work of the company -- the kind that are the real work of the company.

Meetings get a deserved bum rap. They tend to be poorly run, veer off track, and fail to produce much in the way of action, consensus, new insights, or clarity of direction. People often walk out of the room feeling drained and demoralized.

But the truth is that meetings are an invaluable business tool. You simply cannot lead effectively without them. It's up to you to ensure that they serve their intended purpose of synchronizing people's activities and moving the organization forward in the right direction.

The ability to use meetings to bring people together for a particular output is a critical part of managing your organization's social system -- one of the most important know-hows a leader must have.

It's All about Output

At RFMD, the meetings are short, candid, and, most important, they have a clear outcome that's directly linked to the performance of the business.

Creviston gathers the managers, engineers, and support staff who have critical information about how various projects are progressing and how customer demand is shifting. He gets the issues on the table for all to see, and through sharply focused discussion, gets decisions made on the spot.

People walk away knowing what they're expected to do, and Creviston follows up to be sure those things are happening afterward, in the next meeting or sooner.

Meetings should be all about output. You should know exactly what the business purpose is, whether it's to get functional leaders to understand the overall company goal, to shift resources among competing projects or units, to develop ideas for new products, or to identify new growth opportunities or talent.

It's then your job to bring together the right people and information and to keep the dialogue on track, always with a keen eye on that well-defined business output.

The Right Design

A meeting's function should dictate its form:

• The critical intersections

You have to pinpoint where decisions and tradeoffs must be made. Some critical intersections are obvious: between functional silos, geographic areas, and business units. Others include product lines and projects, which often compete for resources.

Although they look like separate entities and may be organized and led as such, their actions are intertwined. You need frequent, focused meetings to make tradeoffs and synchronize those parts of the business.

• The right people

Be very clear about who should -- and who should not -- attend meetings. Everyone in the room should be there either because their input is needed or because the topics being discussed are important to them.

You might need to include people who have to implement a decision so they can see the thought process behind it. (Knowledge workers don't want to do something just because the boss says so.) Think about who is pivotal in acting on a decision and whose passive resistance could grind things to a halt.

• The right information

Many meetings sputter or fail because the group doesn't have the information it needs to move the discussion forward or to arrive at a decision. Be specific in spelling out the information participants are expected to bring to meetings, and to hold them accountable for coming prepared.

Sometimes, you'll need to include people at lower organizational levels -- for instance, on the frontline of sales -- to get a crucial perspective unfiltered.

• The right frequency

Meeting too often is a distraction, and not meeting often enough allows problems to fester. In determining the frequency of meetings, think about their cumulative effect. A weekly staff meeting can accomplish several things: The leader might lay out a vision or set of goals, gather crucial information on how well the strategy is working, figure out how to overcome obstacles in executing the plan, or surface a simmering conflict among team members.

Done repeatedly week after week, month after month, quarter after quarter, the meetings create a rhythm. They keep the organization aligned, energized, and moving forward. The organization is decisive and flexible as adjustments get made promptly.

• The right behavior

We all know what happens in bad meetings: conflicts deepen, discussion creates more confusion than clarity, people don't know they're supposed to do, and nothing happens.

Leaders shape the behavior that makes the dialogue open and constructive or self-interested and contentious. They ask the questions and make the comments that cause the discussion to go somewhere -- or nowhere.

You have to be attuned to people's personal agendas and call them out. You have to challenge the dominant personalities and draw out the passive types. This will take a great deal of personal fortitude, but it's necessary in order to keep the meeting focused on its intended purpose and to keep underlying issues from ballooning.

Why Meetings Matter

It's not an overstatement to say that meetings are where leaders do much, if not most, of their leading. They understand that the work of leading takes place more in the company of others than when holed up in their offices with charts and graphs.

The quality of a meeting is within your control. Make sure meetings not only represent a good use of your time but also that they support your goals, reflect your priorities, and above all deliver on the business output you are accountable for delivering.

If a meeting doesn't meet those criteria, if it has outlived its usefulness, or if, despite your best efforts, it's not serving its intended purpose, there's no reason to continue having it. At that point, maybe it's time to blow it up and wait for the collective sigh of relief.