How to Have an Awesome Meeting Without Saying Much at All
Director Sabina and I had a meeting last night. I thought it would take about thirty minutes. It gobbled up almost three hours.
It was an awesome meeting.
How can this be? I never used to like meetings. My stint at the UNM Medical Library should have more-than-cured me of any desire to sit down with people at all, let alone toss around words like “milestones,” “deliverables,” or even “agendas.”
Not that the meting last night had lots of words like that. But I’m starting to recognize the value that some folks see in ejaculating that vocabulary.
So we met to run down the procedural details of running the auditions coming up. I’m trying a particular style of calling a meeting. I’m curious to know how this fits with people.
How to Have an Awesome Meeting Without Saying Much At All:
- Have a solid reason to call the meeting in the first place.Basically, answer the question, “what do I want to have in my hand when we adjourn.”
Usually it’s a list of tasks that people will take the lead on.
- Determine to an arbitrary detail what topics must be brought up in order to inspire recognition of those tasks.
Last night, it was two lists of what was going to happen at the audition from the points of view of the actors and the crew. We would record the actors, we would feed them, we would welcome them and give them time to warm up, etc. On the other side, they would sign some paperwork, they would wait in a second room to be called in, etc.
- Ask everyone else what they’d like to see happen on the task in question, but don’t fill them in on the list I already have. Mark off topics that other people bring up on their own volition.
This is good because it lets everyone do their own thinking toward a common goal. It lets me gauge how much we’re in sync with each other’s expectations and the common vision. And it lets the creativity happen; instead of being told what’s what, they get to explore the issue themselves.
- Anything that didn’t get marked up, bring up as extra ideas.
That fills in the cracks, and lets my own expectations fall onto a ground of fertile thought rather into than a bucket of seemingly arbitrary expectations.
- Write down the ideas from everyone else.Should go without saying.
So Sabina came by last night, I had my list ready, and I asked her some questions. She had questions of me, which is excellent — I know she’s really thinking about this project on her own time.
By the time we were done, we had the entire process nailed, and we each knew explicitly what everyone else was going to do. Now we do it, and it’s done, and we’re off to the races.
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