Useful meetings: A simple system to get more things done.

Have you ever noticed how some business gurus try to overcomplicate simple ideas? 

It makes you think you need complex solutions to simple things.

I went down that rabbit hole for years looking for technology, apps and advice to help with organising teams, offloading tasks after meetings, and keeping track of where things are up to. 

And you know what…

Often it added complexity and slowed us down instead of making things easier.

In most cases, a simple communication system was faster, easier and got much better outcomes. 

And for the sake of making it memorable, let’s call it WWW+.

It’s about looking at who, what & when, and the plus bit is a rapid accelerator. 

To explain it, let’s look at this scenario:

Say you’re having your weekly operations meeting and there’s a growing list of things to be done. 

Ordinarily, tasks get loosely assigned to people (or not at all) and by the end of the meeting, everyone's hurrying out the door.

For each person, there's normally a bunch of more urgent daily things to attend to so outcomes of that meeting get parked aside to (hopefully) be actioned later. 

In my case, most of it wasn’t getting touched until the same meeting the following week when you read over the action items and remember that there were supposed to be things actioned. 

When you inquire, you normally just get a “Yeah, sorry, I didn’t get to that last week” from whoever might have been handballed the task.

And what can you say at that point?!

By then, it’s all too late and so it gets added to this week's list again…

(Rinse and repeat)

Now, you could look at complex task management systems to hold people accountable. And the bigger your organisation gets, it’s likely you’ll go this way. 

But on your way there, you can simply be more specific with your communication and get equally great outcomes. 

So your only job in that meeting is to figure out these 3 things:

WHO’S doing WHAT, by WHEN.

Stay with me here… Just because it’s obvious, don’t overlook it. 

Let’s look at the earlier meeting scenario:

WHO

In the meeting, every single action item should have someone’s name against it. 

That bit is simple.

WHAT

That person should quickly outline what they think they can get done before the next meeting. 

Align on what ‘good’ looks like and what the item will look like when it’s completed.

For example, is it a two-page report, a slide deck, a financial analysis, a concept, a prototype, etc?

WHEN

Put a time on it that falls within a week. 

Any longer than that, you risk not having it resolved before the next meeting and wasting people’s time. 

(Chunk the task down if it’s too big)

The ‘when’ should be concrete. And just as they should know the deadline, you should have a reminder set to look for it and follow up if it’s not there. 

For example, you meet on Monday afternoon and expect that the task should be complete by close of business on Thursday. 

I like Thursdays because Friday deadlines mean you’re now working the weekend to chase them up or they are because it wasn’t done to the standard you expected. 

As easy as this all sounds, most people don’t stick to simple, effective solutions like this. 

They chase more complex solutions…

But there’s one other habit that turbocharges outcomes. 

It’s the plus bit…

At the end of your meeting where you’re setting the timeline you simply ask this question:

What’s stopping you from getting this done in the next 48 hours?

If you’re making it a priority, help them remove whatever obstacles are in their way.

Instead of piling things up and adding competing priorities, audit your team’s time and help them create space to work on the things that give you the juiciest outcome. 

Often just asking the question makes people reply with 'nothing' and then just crushing it.

Who, What, When + is such a powerful process when you stick to it. 

It’s one of those simple things in business you can use to get ahead because everyone else overlooks it.

I really hope it's useful!