meetings

Most meetings are dreadful and a waste of time. Elon Musk has a reputation for taking care of “effective” meetings, being bold or even rude (“you have not spoken up in the last minutes - what are you doing here at this meeting?”). Never forget though: an associate easily costs the company 500.- per hour, an engineer/manager up to 1.000.- per hour. Ineffective meetings quickly waste thousands of Euros/Dollars.

Typical problems of meetings circulate around discipline (punctuality, attendance ...), facilitation (agenda, focus, ...) and egomania (self-presentation, hot air, ...). There are lots of good recommendations in the public domain about how to organize and lead meetings effectively.

LENCIONI meetings narrative
LENCIONI meeting pyramid

Our approach leans on P. Lencioni’s bestselling book “Death by Meeting”. We take care that agendas fit to the type of meeting and that meeting attendees do not jump between meeting types (see table).

Day-to-day business and projects are dealt with in daily (stand up!) and in weekly meetings. Important topics touched in these routine meetings are postponed for review in monthly or quarterly strategic meetings. Here is an Excel template to record meeting minutes of weekly tactical meetings [19kB], which follows the recommendations of Lencioni.