I wrote this document a while back in order to standardize the way we were conducting meetings in an enterprise environment. You may agree or disagree with my ideas , the important thing is that there is a standard documented way to run a meeting.

 

 

 

 

Identify the need for a meeting

 

Meetings are an important business tool that should always be used when appropriate. Like any tool, if it’s used too often it will lose its effectiveness. Make sure meetings are used whenever necessary but not more often than that.

 

Meetings can be of various types. Use the following table to identify the need for each type of meeting.

 

Meeting type	Identify the need
Status meetings	Status meetings should be initiated by a person leading a project, task or initiative and has some important updates to communicate to a group of people. Status meetings do not replace written updates and are only meant to emphasize the value of a specific point or points in a written update. Status meetings need to proceed or directly follow the written status report.
Work meetings/workshops	These are special meetings that should be scheduled when an important decision has to be reached that necessitates consensus or a solution for a burning problem needs to be identified. Any person which is involved in making the decision or that has connection to the particular problem should signal the need for a work meeting to the owner of the problem, project, task or initiative in cause. The owner needs to schedule the meeting and insure that all relevant parties are involved and are up to date with the relevant information to produce a valid decision or solution.
Team meetings	Team meetings are informal meetings between members of a team working together on a particular initiative. Team meetings should be held whenever necessary in order to increase the knowledge sharing and productivity of the team.
Ad-hoc meetings	These meetings either “just happen” or are called as a mitigation factor in case of an emergency. These meetings need to be done rarely and should not constitue the norm of addressing issues and decisions.
Off- site meetings	The purpose of these meetings is to inspect, clarify or get acquainted with the conditions in a remote location or with systems that cannot be presented on site. These types of meetings are very time consuming and should be scheduled when no accurate written description exists on conditions or systems on the remote site.  The owner of the initiative connected to the remote site needs to initiate the meeting. In general it is unacceptable for meetings with vendors to be held off site.
Kick-off meetings	Kick off meetings are mandatory to be held at the beginning of each initiative that involves more than two people. The owner of the initiative is responsible with scheduling the meeting and insuring that all stakeholders are present at the meeting. The kickoff meeting needs to clearly describe the project and path forward assigning ownership to each action item.
Vendor presentations	Vendor presentations are usually initiated by various vendors. All vendors should be given a fair chance to present their services or products and only in well grounded cases should an initial presentation meeting be refused. Seek approval from your line manager both for accepting and refusing a meeting with a vendor. Subsequent meetings should be accepted only if a need for clarifications is identified.Avoid meeting vendors alone; at least two company representatives should be present in any meeting with a vendor.

 

While this list may not be exhaustive it presents the most common types of meetings encountered by our department. Also the list should form a general idea about how to identify the need for a meeting. Meetings are valuable and should be used when needed but not more often than that.

 

Always ask yourself if the particular issue cannot be solved by email or in another less time consuming ways.

 

A meeting can also be conducted by phone/teleconference. In this case all the rules in this document still apply and the phone conference/teleconference has to be led as a meeting.

 

Prepare a meeting

 

A meeting, like any activity is most effective when it is well planned and prepared in advance. Once the need for a meeting is identified an owner of the meeting should be named. The owner of the meeting is responsible with all further aspects of the meeting up to its closeout.

 

In this phase the owner of the meeting is responsible with the following aspects of the meeting:

 

Issue	Description
Identify participants	All relevant participants should be identified and present at the meeting. The meeting owner should consult some or all of the participants about their opinion with regard to who should be present at the meeting. In general it’s a better practice to “over invite” than to leave somebody out but keep in mind that meetings with a large number of participants become ineffective. Meetings with more the 8 people become difficult manage.One of the participants will be tasked with writing the meeting minutes. In general the owner of the meeting can take this role but a project coordinator can be assigned with this task in case this meeting is related to a project.
Identify venue	An appropriate venue should be identified that fits the number of participants. Use the assistance of the department assistant to identify and book the venue. The venue should generally be a meeting room in the close proximity of the department.
Establish agenda	The owner of the meeting needs to establish a very specific agenda that is detailed enough to be understood by all participants. All points in the agenda will be discussed as separate items in the meeting and ideally a resolution should be agreed in the meeting so agenda of the meeting also forms the basis of the minutes of meeting. In the forming of the agenda it could be useful to consult some or all of the participants.In the case of meetings requested by vendors or third parties it is mandatory that an agenda is received before the meeting is accepted.The first item of the meeting agenda should be checking the minutes of meeting from the previous assembly if this meeting is part of a chain. Established action items should be crosschecked against the deadlines and any lack of progress should be discussed as an individual item.Make sure the items in the agenda are listed in a logical order avoiding to list items before items they are dependant one.
Schedule meeting	The meeting should be scheduled at a time agreed by all participants or by the majority of the participants and should have a duration suitable to cover the agenda. Initial meetings with vendors should not be longer than 45 minutes. In general a meeting of beyond 1~2 hours is considered inefficient and the meeting should be split.With the exception of ad hoc meetings and team meetings, the meetings should be scheduled at least 48h in advance to allow participants to accommodate the meeting in their schedule. Off site meetings or meetings with a large number of participants should be scheduled at least 1 week in advance.Invitations should be sent in written (email or fax) and should include list of participants, meeting time and venue and meeting agenda. Use the assistance of the department assistant or project coordinator to liaise with participants and keep a clear record of participants that have confirmed attendance. If mandatory participants have not confirmed the attendance up to 24h before the meeting follow up with a call and cancel the meeting if confirmation cannot be obtained.
Establish rules for the meeting	This is an optional step but can be very useful when a large number of participants are involved. In case of off-site meetings any safety concerns need to be documented and distributed to all participants.

 

Conduct the meeting

 

Conducting the meeting is the sole responsibility and privilege of the owner of the meeting. Conducting a successful meeting has as much to do with art as it has to do with art as it has to do with talent and personal skills. In any way, a well planned meeting should be fairly easy to run. In order for a meeting to be successful all participants need to be properly involved and it is the meeting owner’s responsibility to insure this. Below are the phases of the meeting that are mandatory.

 

Phase	Description
Introduction	Make sure the meeting starts on time. The person assigned with keeping the meeting minutes should go through the presence and apologies list, making sure that everyone who confirmed their attendance is present.Ideally all participants should have a copy of the meeting agenda in front of themNext, the meeting owner should thank the participants for their attendance.In case of initial meeting with third parties (vendors) a short introduction about your company should be made. Information from Annex A should serve as a guideline to this introduction. In case of offsite meeting this would be a good opportunity for the owner of the meeting to remind all participants about the rules of the site meeting, especially health and safety rules. If the meeting attendance does not give enough respresentation, it is best to cancel the meeting than to hold the meeting and repeat it another time. It is useful however to discuss the subject and see if a general consensus can be reached with those present, which may allow for the coming session to be brief.
Meeting	The meeting owner is responsible with going through each agenda item, one by one and preferably in the order they were listed. Enough time should be allocated for each item but the meeting owner is responsible to make sure the meeting stays within the agreed timeframe. If the meeting risks overshooting the agreed timeframe the meeting owner has to make a decision if he desires to split the agenda and discuss the remaining items in a subsequent meeting or he wishes to force a quick resolution on the items. Either way all participants should be informed about the decision.During meetings side discussions will occur. Side discussions should be allowed especially among the members of a particular entity (members of a specific group) if this facilitates reaching a resolution in the meeting. Otherwise only very limited side discussions should be allowed and in no case should side discussions break out in to a fight among various parties.It is also the meeting owner’s responsibility to insure that all participants are focused and follow the discussions carefully. Valuable time may be lost if some of the participants are focusing on other tasks (like email, phone, web browsing, thinking about home) and subsequently discover that agreements have been reached that they do not concur with. To avoid such situations on critical decisions the meeting owner should poll all participants if they concur to the statements.During the meeting the person designated should write down minutes of meeting. For this purpose a sample format is listed in Annex C.
Ending	The person assigned with keeping the minutes of meeting should read the action items noted in the minutes of meeting and insure all participants agree with the statements.Subsequently the meeting owner should announce participants if a follow up meeting is desired and attempt to agree on scheduling.The meeting owner should thank the participants for their attendance.

 

In case the meeting gets out of hand and the participants are belligerent do not hesitate to close the meeting early in order to avoid further conflict. Keep in mind that closing a meeting early can be considered offensive and all measures to calm the situation down should be taken beforehand.

 

 

 

Close out

 

 

The close out phase of a meeting is just as important as the meeting itself although it happens after the actual assembly. The purpose of this phase is to insure that the information has been properly captured and shared among the members of our department and action items efficiently monitored.

 

The following actions should be performed in the close out phase:

 

Action	Description
Formatting minutes of meeting	The minutes of meeting should be placed in an electronic format. This action needs to be performed immediately after the meeting by the person who captured them in order to make sure the information is still fresh in the persons mind and no important items are missed.
Approval by line manager	The minutes of meetings are sent in electronic format to the line manager of the owner of the meeting. The line manager will review them and approve them within 48h.
Distribution of minutes of meeting	Once the minutes of meetings are reviewed and approved by the line manager the meeting owner will distribute the minutes of meeting to all those who were invited to the meeting, not just those who attended. The meeting owner might seek the assistance of a project coordinator for this task if the meeting is part of a project. The minutes of meeting should be distributed no later than 72h after the meeting.
Follow up on action items	The owner of the meeting (as well as all other participants) is responsible to follow up on action items described in the meeting and plan subsequent meetings if necessary.

 

On very rare occasions the minutes of meeting might be rejected by a participant. In this case the disputed issue becomes an item for discussion on a follow up meeting and all participants should be informed about this fact.

 

 

 

Other general advice

 

 

In general meetings can be a fun way to resolve issues if information is properly captured and shared. However occasionally they may turn tense. It is the meeting owner’s responsibility to manage any arising situation (starting from two participants fighting over minor issues to ensuring safe evacuation in case of fire alarm) and insure that the all participants have a positive attitude throughout the meeting.

 

As a general advice it is important to keep the meeting bound to the initial agenda avoid breaking into one on one discussions or accusing a particular person. Do not allow anyone to bash the company or his colleagues. While issues will always exist it is important to resolve those issues internally without involving third parties any way. Remember, the meeting is a business tool meant to resolve or clarify issues, not to evaluate performance.

 

 

Annex A

 

Relevant information about your company

 

The following information should form the basis of a verbal company presentation given to vendors in initial meetings. Keep your presentation short, 5 minutes or so and remember the purpose of the meeting is for your company to understand the products or services delivered by the vendor, not the other way around.

 

Topic	Description
Your Company
Your Department
Your group
Major projects underway
Your long term target
Major programs
Your master plan
NDA Agreement

 

 

Annex B

 

Process overview

 

 

 

Annex C

 

Minutes of meetings format

 

 

Minutes of meeting are part of the meeting close out package and represent the output of the meeting. They are very important and need to be written down for all meetings with the exception of initial meetings with vendors. If the initial meeting with vendors results in action items, (such as scheduling a second meeting, signing an NDA agreement or the vendor delivering a sample of a product or service) this meeting needs to be minuted and the minutes of meeting distributed to all participants including the vendor.

 

Minutes of meetings should record all relevant statements made in the meeting and especially al action items with a specific due date.

 

 

 

Minutes of Meeting

 

 

 

Meeting Owner:

Date and time:

 

 

 

 

 

Participants

 

Name	Initials	Present?	Name	Initials	Present?
Ligiu UIOREAN	LU1		Somebody Else	SE1

 

Agenda

 

No	Item	Description	Owner	Due Date
1	State of the document	The “How to conduct meetings” document is pending	LU1	23rd July 2009
2	Document approval process	Somebody needs to approve the document	SE1	1st Aug 2009
3	Other items	Loose items to be discussed

 

Minutes of meeting

 

No	Issue	Statement or Action Item?	Owner	Due Date
1	The document is almost finished	S	LU1
2	SE1 will check the finished document	A	SE1	1st Aug 2009

 

Minutes of meetings created by:

Signature: