Make Meetings Suck Less In 3 Steps

You’ve heard of a meeting agenda, but have you heard of a meeting POW?

Probably not, because I’ve only found one link that talks about it. Click here if you’d like to skip my rendition and go directly to the source.

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What is it with meetings and why are they such a time suck? I’ll say it: because people don’t prepare for them.

Meetings are only productive if the person hosting has thought through the reason for the meeting and the attendees know what’s expected of them. Introduce the meeting POW!

The meeting host must establish the Purpose, Outcome, and Why (POW) and circulate this to attendees before the meeting.

Let’s dissect the POW:

Purpose: Determine the purpose by asking “Why are we holding this meeting?” If the answer is something like “to update people on blah blah blah,” do everyone a favour and just send an email. BOOM — another unnecessary meeting avoided.

I like to start the purpose with “To [blank]” (eg. To review the project timeline.).

Outcome: Figure out the meeting outcome(s) by asking “What do we want to accomplish?” I find it helps to start all my outcome bullet points with, “By the end of this meeting… [fill in the blank]” (eg. By the end of this meeting, we’ll have an approved timeline.).

Having a list of expected outcomes will give you a clear indication of your progress during a meeting. Bonus: if you meet all your outcomes before the end of your scheduled meeting, you can end the meeting early (imagine that)!

Why? The “Why” is two-fold:

• Why are you meeting? What’s the reason behind the meeting in the first place? This is slightly different than the purpose in that it’s the cause behind the need to meet. Using the same example, the why could be “Coronavirus has derailed all our plans and the project timeline has been pushed back two weeks.”
• Why must each individual attend the meeting? Do certain attendees have to provide information? Do they have to approve something? Do they have to take notes? Do they have to facilitate the meeting? In this fictional meeting, some meeting attendees might be the project manager (has to present the new project timeline), the production manager (has to confirm how long certain activities take, someone from the finance team (has to give an okay in terms of payment implications), the account manager (has to communicate changes to the client), etc. Ask yourself what role you expect each attendee to fill before you finalize your invite list. Again, if it’s just to be “kept in the loop,” consider sparing them from your meeting by circulating a follow-up email after the meeting.

P-O-W, easy as 1–2–3.

Some general courtesy things in regards to meetings:

• Always, always start on time.
• Get agreement on the meeting POW at the start of the meeting.
• Follow up your POW with a meeting agenda.
• Always end meetings on time. If your meeting is going to run over the scheduled time, schedule a separate meeting to address the remaining outcomes.

And to those of us on the receiving end of meetings, if a host doesn’t send you a POW beforehand, feel free to politely decline that waste of time because there’s a 90% chance that meeting will add zero value to your workday (don’t fact check me on that exact figure).