Make Meetings Better

Meetings are easy to hate: they clutter our calendars, eat up our time, and often accomplish very little besides getting more meetings scheduled. Francesca consults with a raft of meeting experts in an attempt to reform one of her more aimless meetings: a weekly team check-in. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Recently, we heard from a listener who has something about work.
She just hates Hi. There, this is Grace calling for work.
For me, I feel like meetings are something that just
creep into my life and calendar and before I know,
it's day is over and I haven't gotten anything done.

(00:24):
So I guess my question is, how do you find
the balance of meetings when you work at a company. Yeah,
I hear you, Grace. You're not the only one who
thinks that meetings are a hellish time suck. In fact,
it's a common theme on the ted Talk productivity Expert circuit.

(00:45):
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.

(01:07):
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.

(01:30):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:13):
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

(02:34):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:17):
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

(03:38):
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

(04:00):
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

(04:22):
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.

(04:45):
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

(05:07):
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.

(05:27):
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

(05:48):
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

(06:10):
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

(06:31):
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

(06:52):
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,

(07:15):
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

(07:35):
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

(07:56):
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

(08:17):
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.

(08:39):
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,

(09:03):
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

(09:24):
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

(09:46):
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

(10:08):
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

(10:28):
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

(10:49):
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

(11:13):
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

(11:36):
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

(11:58):
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

(12:19):
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

(12:40):
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?

(13:02):
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?

(13:23):
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

(13:44):
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

(14:07):
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

(14:29):
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

(14:53):
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.

(15:13):
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

(15:36):
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

(16:00):
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

(16:21):
in each moment, I'd have to be a great wedding
DJ basically find out how that goes. After the break,

(16:53):
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

(17:15):
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

(17:38):
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

(18:00):
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

(18:22):
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

(18:44):
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

(19:06):
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.

(19:32):
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

(19:54):
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.

(20:18):
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,

(20:42):
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

(21:04):
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

(21:25):
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

(21:48):
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,

(22:10):
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

(22:30):
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

(22:55):
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

(23:18):
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

(23:38):
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

(24:00):
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

(24:22):
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

(24:44):
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

(25:07):
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.

(25:28):
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,

(25:51):
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

(26:13):
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,

(26:37):
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

(26:59):
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

(27:25):
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.

(27:48):
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.

(28:11):
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

(28:33):
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,

(28:55):
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

(29:16):
for being a part of this episode. Francesca Levy is
Bloomberg's head of Podcasts and we'll see you next week. Hi,