MEETINGS

Plan a Better Meeting withDesign Thinkingby Maya Bernstein and Rae Ringel

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

DANIEL DAY/GETTY IMAGES

“Sometimes, when I sit in meetings, especially ones in which people don’t seem engaged, I

calculate the cost in staff time. I’ve estimated that one standard weekly meeting in my

bureau — 50 people sitting in a cookie-cutter conference room, looking both bored and

anxious — costs around $177,000 annually, and surely this scenario occurs throughout the

[organization] hundreds of times a day. It drains us, and it breeds cynicism. So many

meetings are lost opportunities.”

Do these sentiments — expressed by an applicant to the course on meeting facilitation we

teach at Georgetown University — sound familiar to you? They should, according

to these statistics on meetings:

Organizations hold more than 3 billion meetings each year.

Executives spend 40-50% of their working hours — or 23 hours per week — in meetings.

90% of meeting attendees admit to daydreaming in them.

73% acknowledge they do other work during meetings.

25% of meetings are spent discussing irrelevant issues.

At the same time, the right kind of meetings can be key to advancing a team or

organization’s agenda. So how do you ensure that the gatherings you host are productive,

not destructive?

By applying design thinking, a concept popularized by IDEO founder David Kelly and

Stanford’s d.school, which was first applied to the design of physical objects, then other

products, such as technological tools, and now to more complex challenges across a wide

variety of industries. The idea is to put the “user” at the center of the experience — an

approach that works with meeting design, too.

Start by putting your own expertise and agenda aside and thinking about the people who

will be affected by your meeting. Develop empathy for them by asking three sets of

questions:

1. Who is going to be in the room and what are their needs?

2. Who won’t be in the room but will nevertheless be affected by the meeting and what are

YOU AND YOUR TEAM SERIES

Meetings

their needs?

3. In what broader culture and environment are you operating and what are some of the

overarching challenges and opportunities?

Actively seek out individuals who will attend the meeting, or who will be affected by it, and

speak with them — ideally in person. Even if you run regular meetings with the same group

of people, these individual brief check-ins can help build trust, surfaces hidden issues and

ensures that participants feel more invested.

Next, set a frame for the meeting. Once you’ve attentively listened and observed, you’ll

want to suggest an overarching purpose for the meeting and articulate clear outcomes that

will connect to achieving it. We recommend that you ask yourself: If this meeting is wildly

successful, what will people feel, know, and do as a result? Include these desired outcomes

in your agenda, so that participants know why they’re attending and can gauge with you

whether or not the time has been productive. In our experience, people rarely spend enough

doing these things. Meetings are often put on the calendar without a particular goal in

mind — simply to hold the time — and, as a result, the cart often drives the horse; people

meet simply because they feel they must. Even — perhaps especially — short meetings

deserve a clear purpose and clearly articulated desired outcomes. This keeps people on task,

and ensures that people feel that their time is well spent.

The third step is to creatively design the

meeting. Once you know the core question to

address, and what success might look like,

you should create your agenda. People tend

to throw agendas together at the last minute,

if at all. We compare the design and execution

of meetings to the driving navigation app

Waze: what is the quickest, safest, most

effective way to get to your destination? The

The Seven Imperatives to KeepingMeetings on Trackby Amy Gallo

How to Design an Agenda for an EffectiveMeetingby Roger Schwarz

Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting?by Elizabeth Grace Saunders

first step, immersing yourself with people,

was about understanding where you need to

go (the beach? the city? the mountains?). The

second step was about identifying your

desired destination — your exact address and

location. This third step is all about the route.

Should you get there as fast as possible? Do

you need to take a detour? What is the most

scenic route? Are there roads that you’ve traveled so many times before that are perhaps

best to avoid? What might you need to watch out for — your team’s equivalent of potholes or

traffic jams? This is the phase where we encourage people to be playful, to put reality on

hold for a bit and push past their initial, “go-to” ideas. What would it look like for you to

infuse your meetings with a bit of fun? To begin and end in an unexpected way? To use film,

images, poetry, or music to spark ideas? To create an opportunity for personal sharing and

connection? While this might sound frivolous, it is actually extremely important. Meetings

are opportunities not simply to get things done, but also foster a positive team culture.

Finally, test-drive your plan, in the same way that a product designer would put an early

prototype into users’ hands. In a meeting context, this might be a draft agenda shared with

participants. Their responses will help you gain more empathy, frame new questions, get

even more creative in your meeting design, and increase your potential for success at the

actual gathering.

People who have applied this design process to their meetings tell us that it has radically

affected both the efficacy of those gatherings, and the attitude people in their organizations

have about them. Each phase has its benefits. Immersing helps people feel heard, and it

ensures that meeting leaders are connected to participants. Framing pushes the meeting

leaders to ensure that there are clear goals for each meeting. Imagining leads to more

creativity and experimentation in the meeting design. Finally, prototyping—something as

simple as getting feedback on your plan from a few people — makes people feel valued, more

accountable in the meetings, and more invested in their success.

This may seem onerous for every meeting but, with practice, you can learn to cycle through

these stages in less and less time, and you’ll find that small investment upfront saves

significant time in the long run. You’ll have fewer meetings, and those you do have will be

more productive — even sometimes fun.

Maya Bernstein is an independent consultant working in the areas of innovation,

leadership, and creativity. She is a faculty member at the Georgetown University Institute for

Transformational Leadership and co-director of the Executive Certificate in

Facilitation program.

Rae Ringel is the president of The Ringel Group, a leadership development

consultancy specializing in facilitation, coaching and training. She is a faculty member at the

Georgetown University Institute for Transformational Leadership and co-director of the

Executive Certificate in Facilitation program.

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