Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00.01.11: Some meeting statistics

00:04:25: Good vs bad meetings

00:10:09: Why meetings are good

00:14:33: Ideas for action …

00:14:38: … 1: use questions or decisions to create agendas

00:18:58: … 2: make meetings shorter

00:26:00: … 3: don't default; decide

00:32:44: Top tips

00:35:15: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  Every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and we share some ideas and tools that we hope will help you to succeed in your Squiggly Career.

Helen Tupper: And if you are a new listener to Squiggly, welcome.  You might not know that as well as this episode, we also produce lots of different things to help you with your career.  So, you can download a one-page summary of today's episode, we'll tell you what we're talking about in a minute; and you can also join a weekly session that we do, which is called PodPlus, where we talk to the community about the topic.  And actually, it's a really nice community, people share their ideas and their experiences.  And if you ever need a little bit of a boost, I think it's just quite a nice conversation to be part of, and it's all free.  You can find out the information there in the show notes on Apple, or just go to our website, which is amazingif.com, head to the podcast page and you'll be able to see everything there. So, today we are talking about meetings, specifically how to make every meeting matter, which you might be thinking, "Impossible Task, that is an ambitious title for this episode, Helen and Sarah", and it is a topic we have covered before but it was a while ago.  When I was researching, I was like, "When did we last really talk about meetings?"  It was episode 101, so that is many episodes ago.  And it was back in 2019, ie pre-pandemic. 

And so, I think talking about meetings pre-pandemic is quite different to the way that we work now.  It's probably one of the things that has changed the most, actually, in how we have meetings now.  And there are some particular differences that are worth being aware of, because it informs what we're going to talk about today. So, more meetings, so average time Teams users spent in meetings has more than tripled between February 2020, pre-pandemic, to February 2022, and obviously that's just on Microsoft Teams as a platform; the mix of meetings has changed, so perhaps unsurprisingly, remote meetings have now increased by 60% since pre-pandemic; and also the quality of meetings.  So, we might be having more meetings and the mix might have changed, but the quality of them hasn't improved.  They are actually rated, in some recent research by Microsoft as, "The number one productivity killer at work".  Hooray!  Meetings aren't everyone's favourite way to spend their day, but we all find ourselves in them.  That's why we wanted to tackle it a little bit and see if we could make meetings and the moments that they feature a bit better for everyone.

Sarah Ellis: And they're obviously such a challenge for organisations that there are some really fascinating case studies that you can read of companies that have really started from ground zero when it comes to meetings.  So, Shopify, for example, they completely started from scratch.  So, they took out every single meeting, their employees then had to wait two weeks and then you could decide which ones do you want to add back in.  But they then had no meetings on Wednesday and there was a pound or dollar sign attached to each meeting.  So, depending on the level of the people, like how much they were paid and the people then in that meeting, you could see how much that meeting costs.  And through doing this, apparently 322 hours' worth of meeting time was removed, and I was just imagining, you know that thing of just seeing these pound signs on meetings.  No wonder no one added them back in again, you'd be absolutely terrified of meeting anyone!

Helen Tupper: But can't you imagine someone with a real ego being like, "Oh, it's so expensive to have a meeting with me.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I know.

Helen Tupper: I'd rather they created like a meeting currency that was universal, you know, like each meeting minute costs this much to the company rather than, "Oh, that meeting's got senior people in it and their time is worth more," in a way.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I hope I've understood that right, but I think that's how it was described.  But there are quite a few examples of organisations who've done something similar, where tweaking around the edges clearly doesn't feel like it's going to have enough of an impact, or maybe they've tried one meeting-free day a week and nothing changed, no one's doing anything differently, and so they've almost said, "Right, we've got to almost assume no meetings and then almost build back up from there".  And apparently, people are much more then intentional, as you would be, because you suddenly create this sense of, "Actually, what's the meeting for?" and you start to ask different questions, I think.  And we've all experienced meetings so we thought it'd be quite fun to describe a good versus a bad meeting.  So, Helen how are you feeling after a good meeting?

Helen Tupper: I think I have felt impactful, like there was value in me being part of it, rather than when you sit there and you think, "That wasn't a really good use of my time, I didn't add anything to it".  So, I think I feel like I have been impactful".  And I also feel like it's a positive meeting for me if I felt very present, so if I felt mentally in the meeting.  I think there are quite a lot of meetings that I'm in where it's in my diary but I don't really think it's in my brain, because my brain is in other places.  So, "I think I've been impactful and I've been able to be present", that's probably a good meeting for me.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: Good meetings for me, I'm always looking for clarity.  So, I want to know what's most important to talk about?  Why are we talking about it?  What decisions have we made?  I think actually, I do appreciate structure, and so I like that sense of, we're really clear about why we're here and what we're trying to do.  And I always know I've had a good meeting because I just really actually feel energised afterwards.  So, as somebody who is introverted and I do get drained if I spend too much time with people, so I definitely need time to kind of reboot, there are a couple of meetings I'm thinking about over the past couple of weeks where actually, as we were starting the meeting, one of our partners shared priority they got with me that I didn't know beforehand, but they said, "Oh, could we use the second half of the meeting to talk about …?" and we did, in both instances, we kind of made time to do that.  Actually, I just felt really upbeat, you feel like you've been really useful, you feel like that actually you've talked about the thing that has been helpful for somebody else, so I think that point about helpful and useful as well.

Helen Tupper: And what about bad meetings then?  That was nice, those meetings sound great.  Are they all like that?

Sarah Ellis: No, I was thinking actually, do you know, I reckon a sign of a really bad meeting is then when you have to have a conversation about how bad the meeting was.  And I was listening to Adam Grant talk a little bit about this as well, like rumination over why that meeting was so frustrating, everyone's more confused at the end than they were at the start.  And then obviously, you waste even more time doing that, so it's unproductive squared because you've had a bad meeting, and then it has this really bad ripple effect.  And I think the other thing, which sounds a bit harsh, I think it probably goes back to what you were saying, is like, if you just feel like a meeting's been pointless and you just feel like, "Well, it didn't need me, I've not been helpful, and so I've just lost time that I could have spent on something else". I think I've probably always felt that in my career, but I really feel that now probably more than ever, because there's always something I'd want to be doing.  I could be researching a podcast, I could be asking an interesting question on LinkedIn, ready for a podcast case study.  There's always loads of ways I'd want to spend my time.  I'd love to have infinite time on all things career development.  So, I think now I feel it more keenly than ever before, if I feel like a time in a meeting was wasted rather than well spent.  What about you?  What's a bad meeting for you?  Meeting with me?

Helen Tupper: Well, yes, all the time!  I think mine is my issue, actually, a lot of the time.  So, of course there are some meetings where I'm like, "Oh, what's the agenda?" and all that kind of stuff.  But I think the meetings that I find most frustrating are when I feel like I'm on the clock, if you know what I mean, I've got lots to do.  So, I am very conscious of time in my mind.  And when people are talking around a topic longer than I, which I don't think is necessarily right, it's just my opinion, longer than I think we need to, I find that really frustrating, and I'd be like, "We could talk about this in five minutes and then get on".  And you know I'm like that, you know I am, but I do recognise that that's a me thing and I also recognise that people take different things from meetings. I think me things versus you know the meeting that other people need to have is interesting and I've just tried to acknowledge that for a lot of the time for me, meetings are quite functional like, "Okay, what do we need to talk?  Can we get it done?  Are we all clear?  Let's move on".  I think that is quite me in my approach.  But actually, for other people, the purpose of that meeting might be slightly different.  Even though it's an agenda there, that meeting might be more about connection, it might be about something else.  And so I try, I try to not just make that meeting about what I need to get from it, but I do find it hard.  When people loop around and go round and round, I'm like, "Yeah, move on".  You know I do!

Sarah Ellis: Well, I guess there is a good point in there though about crossed wires, in terms of the purpose of getting together, because if you do think, "Well, it is really important that we cover these three areas and make these three decisions", and someone else is just thinking, "Oh, I just like to connect and see how everyone's doing or how everyone's feeling", and that this is more of a discussion than a decision meeting, then I don't think that's helpful for anyone.  So, there's probably a bit of self-awareness from you in there which you just shared, but there's also probably --

Helen Tupper: Well, I've had the feedback.  Lovely Lucy in our team, who might be listening to this now, she gave me some feedback on our one-to-ones, and she said, "I found it more helpful in our one-to-ones when we're talking around a topic".  So, I can go into a meeting to just be quite task-focused like, "Okay, let's go through this, let's go", and she's like, "No, I'd like to talk around it and inform it and think".  And that actually was really, really useful feedback --

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that is good feedback.

Helen Tupper: -- because I think I've been too task-y in a meeting.  So I think, yeah, that's just my perspective, but I guess the main point is, other people have different perspectives on what meetings might be and sometimes you might need to talk about that so that you are all getting what you need from them.

Sarah Ellis: And so today, we're going to share three quite big ideas around how to make meetings matter.  But before we do that, we thought it was just worth giving meetings a bit of credit, just talking about why when they are good, they can actually be great.  Because meetings were originally introduced when organisations were moving away from command and control as a way of working.  So, in lots of ways then, you didn't need to have meetings because you just did what you were told.  So, there is potential, at least, democratisation of everybody involved, people feeling that they can contribute, people's voices being heard.  It's just whether that actually feels like the reality for people.  So, I suspect we can all think about, if we give meetings a break for a moment, we can all think about great meetings, meetings where we feel really good, where we feel like we're making great progress.  I suspect the problem is there's just not enough of those.

Helen Tupper: And also, I think meetings could become even better, not just with the ideas for action but with the role of technology.  So, I was reading some interesting stuff.  Microsoft has done a lot of research.  They have this future work lab stuff that does lots of interesting research with all the data that they get from Microsoft Teams.  And there was a quote in one of the articles that I was reading, and we'll put it in the PodSheet if you want to dive into some of their work, but it talked about meetings becoming "knowledge objects", which I thought was really interesting. So traditionally, meetings, you need to be present in them in order to learn from them and contribute to them. 

But now, meetings are sort of knowledge objects, so if you've got anything like Microsoft Copilot running, or maybe like Fireflies or Poised, all these bits of technology which basically capture the conversation that's going on in a meeting, this idea of a meeting as a knowledge object is almost like an artifact that you can refer back to.  So, let's say I haven't felt particularly present or I was a bit distracted in a meeting, if that has been captured using one of those tech tools, then I can query it afterwards.  I maybe had to leave early or whatever.  I can say, "Oh, let me know when my name was mentioned in the meeting".  I could literally query the conversation because it would have been recorded, and I could see all the times that my name might have come up, or I could ask it what were the top three actions that were assigned to people.  And I just think it's quite interesting about, we used to have to be present to get the most out of a meeting, but now I think you can potentially not be present, potentially either not be in there or not be mentally in there for me sometimes, but you can still get value from it in the way that the meeting has been captured.  So, I feel like we're in a really interesting time with what tech is doing for meetings actually.

Sarah Ellis: And one of the things that apparently happens a lot with meetings in particular is this concept that I'd never come across before, it's not a lovely phrase to be honest, but it's called "pluralistic ignorance".  And I was like, "Oh, that doesn't sound like good news".  But essentially, it's when you think that other people hold a different opinion to you, but you imagine that everybody thinks that thing.  So, apparently with meetings, often we think we're the only one.  So, we might be saying to ourselves, "Well, this meeting is a waste of time [or] a bit of a shambles [or] it's so unproductive", but we assume that everyone else thinks it's productive and everyone else maybe seems to be engaged or present, and then nobody ends up doing anything about it.  Apparently, it happens a lot when you maybe see something that's going wrong and you assume, "Oh, they must be helping, so I don't need to help". Apparently, it's become one of those norms that no one really speaks out about, because everyone just got so used to it, and there's quite a lot of fear with meetings like, "Oh, if I'm not in it, if I'm not seen to be in it, does that mean I'm going to be out of the loop?  And do I need to make sure I'm at least seen to be in that meeting for things like influence and impact, and those sorts of things?"  So, I actually think there are actually quite a lot of attitudes and behaviours that we've got used to over a really long period of time, where making every meeting matter, I reckon for pretty much all of us, means quite a lot of unlearning and relearning.

Helen Tupper: I could totally imagine being like, "I can't make that meeting today, but I'll catch up on it later", and my catch-up is literally just searching the transcription and being like, "Yeah, got it in two minutes".  I mean, I could totally!

Sarah Ellis: That's my solution!  I mean, are we going to get to a point where you and I just never need to meet?  Or you'll just be like, "Well, can you just record it?"

Helen Tupper: Just record it and I'll query it and I'll be fine!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!

Helen Tupper: That sounds great!  There are some other ideas, though, before we default to that outcome for our meetings.  So, idea number one is to use questions or decisions to create agendas.  So, I was reading some really interesting work by a guy called Dr Steven Rogelberg, and he wrote two books, The Surprising Science of Meetings and Glad We Met, which is more about one-to-one meetings.  And there's a good HBR free article that you can read from him.  What is interesting, and I saw this actually, we asked on LinkedIn today for people's top tip on how to make meetings more useful, and lots and lots of people say, "Have an agenda", it's all about having an agenda. 

Now, the science would tell you that's not true.  Having an agenda or not having an agenda makes little difference to the effectiveness of a meeting.  It's actually what's on that agenda and how that agenda is framed that actually really matters. So, this idea of rather than having, you know lots of agendas are just a bullet-point list of, "These are the five things that we need to talk about", I think that's how I would always imagine an agenda; he actually suggests that you convert that sort of "laundry list", as I think he describes it, into questions that we need to answer together or decisions that we need to make, because it really crystallises the purpose of a meeting.  So, for example, I had a go with a meeting that we will be having soon, and then slightly made up the alternatives, but you could just see, "Agenda item one: cash flow", and you just think, "Okay, we're going to be talking about cash flow".  Or you could write something like, "How do we increase our cash flow by 10% in the next financial year?"  So, you've then got real clarity on what you're going to discuss in that meeting.  Or you might write, "Decision: invest cash in project A or project B?" The reason that really helps people is, the majority of people really appreciate knowing beforehand what they're going to talk about.  And there's a brilliant lady who I follow on LinkedIn, called Dr Carrie Goucher, who I actually got in touch with slightly randomly on LinkedIn and said, "Is it okay if I mention some of your work?"  She's got a PhD and she really focuses on meetings.  And she says, "If you share agendas beforehand, it's much more neuro-inclusive".  And she mentioned that so many people don't appreciate an ambush. 

Now, I know it won't always feel like an ambush, but I am definitely one of those people where if you give me a question or a decision, it really helps me, because I'll just start mulling it over in my mind.  And it also just means we know exactly what we're there to do. The top tip on this is, if you've got more than one question or decision, which you might have a list that you're working your way through, just always put your most important ones first, because there's quite a lot of evidence that people run out of time with meetings, or perhaps sometimes it takes longer to discuss one thing than you'd imagined.  And so it just means that you've also gone with what matters most and maybe if you come back to one of those questions in a further meeting that's okay.  So, I mean I am a real convert to this, I've spent a lot of time looking at this today and I'm like, "That's it, every agenda now should have questions or decisions".  What do you think Helen, are you convinced?

Helen Tupper: Well, I do like them, so it makes your point, my brain starts thinking; whereas if it's a bit -- I might be distracted by the ambiguity of it just saying, "Cash flow", and thinking, "Well, have we got a problem with cash flow?" or, "Should I be worried?"  Whereas, I think the question, it creates clarity and curiosity at the same time, which I quite like that.  So, you're probably going to get people's brains -- you're sort of warming up your brains for the conversation.  I was just thinking about some of our agendas, Sarah, that you often create.  I'm rubbish at agendas, everyone, I just rock up and I'm like, "Right, what are we here to talk about?"

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  Well, the argument is that me just doing those agendas is not enough, so this is how I need to be.  So, just you wait till our next agenda.

Helen Tupper: Well, I'm all right about it.  I rationalise it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you never read them!

Helen Tupper: Well, I think it's more for you!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, great. Helen Tupper: And I just accept that.  But I think you need it and I recognise that, and that's fine.  But I was just thinking, the amount of bullet points that go on those lists sometimes, you're going to spend a lot of time writing questions, but I do quite like the questions.  I'd probably just like fewer of them in our meetings.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Fewer questions for us to address.  And on that point of fewer, we're also going to address, in idea number two, making meetings shorter.  So, just back to that research I was reading in the Microsoft stuff, there's some really interesting pictures, I like a picture.

Sarah Ellis: I know, those brain pictures blew my mind, Helen, blew my mind.

Helen Tupper: Should we put these pictures in the PodSheet so people can see?

Sarah Ellis: Are we allowed to?  I think we're allowed to, as long as we link to the research, right?

Helen Tupper: We can reference it.

Sarah Ellis: I loved them.

Helen Tupper: All right, we'll put the pictures.  Basically, these pictures, everybody, are of what our brain looks like in back-to-back meetings.  And they did some research where, I think it was two hours, so not even loads to be honest.  I feel like some days it's much worse than that.  There was two hours of meetings, one group had four 30-minute meetings back to back; the other group had four meetings, but rather than back to back, they had I think it was 15 minutes to meditate, or 15 or 10 minutes to meditate between each meeting.

Sarah Ellis: Ten, I think, yeah.

Helen Tupper: And they show you basically what's happening to the brain and the colours are to indicate what's happening.  And I guess the spoiler is stress.  So, what happens when you have back-to-back meetings with no breaks is stress accumulates in your brain, and you can visually see what's happening in the pictures.

Sarah Ellis: You can literally see it, can't you?

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  You're like, "Oh, my gosh!"

Sarah Ellis: They show your brain is changing colour.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  Basically, the happy brains are blue and green --

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, calm.

Helen Tupper: -- and the not so happy brains are yellow and red and orange, because they're accumulating all this stress.  And other than not feeling very nice, the outcome of it in terms of your effectiveness is you are more likely to get distracted throughout the day and lose focus.  So, the more back-to-back meetings you have, the less effective you are in them.  And there was another bit in that research I thought was quite interesting, which is about the transitions between meetings are peak points of stress.  And I was like, "Oh, I get that".  And I think it makes me start meetings really ineffectively.  So, if I'm back to back, and I know I do it, I will arrive in the next meeting and I'll either apologise a lot, "I'm really sorry I'm late", or, "Gosh, what a day", I'll just outpour what I'm feeling, which I think is a really demotivating start for somebody who might have wanted this meeting with you and has been waiting for it for the week to have it.  But these points of transition between back-to-back meetings are really where you see the stress start to peak. So, we want to avoid this, we don't want meetings to be this situation where as they go on, you become less good in them, that's not really going to help us with that impact, and there are some simple things that we can do to counteract what might happen.  So, the first thing is 15-minute meetings, which might be like the sticking-plaster solution, but I think very often there are some meetings that might be in your diary for half an hour or 45.  

Even if you just experiment with, "Okay, this week, I'm going to take two or three of the meetings that are normally, by default …", because a lot of our meetings are in our diaries by default because they're recurring meetings, and try it for 15 minutes.  You can get some what-worked-well, even-better-if feedback from your team afterwards.  So, you're not saying it's always going to be 15 minutes.  Maybe it's every other version of that meeting.  So, if it's a weekly meeting, one week it's 15 minutes, the next week you keep to your 30. But just keeping meetings shorter means you're more focused and you might be able to start thinking, "Well, what do I need to do for more of my meetings to be like that?"  And maybe you can start calling them like, "Oh, let's put 15 minutes in rather than the default 30 minutes", for people.  I've actually started, in my emails with people, being a bit more explicit about the time.  So, I used to say, "Let's get a meeting in" and then some people had put it in for an hour and I'd be like, "Oh, no, we didn't need an hour", and then it's a bit awkward to reduce it. 

So, now I'm more explicit.  I'll be like, "Oh, let's just put 20 minutes in for a quick catch-up on that thing", and I kind of frame that time.  The other way you can do this is a stand-up meetings, which could work virtually or in person.  But they tend to be shorter because if people I think are just more conscious, it feels a bit unusual to do it, because it might not be the norm for most people.  So, it feels a bit unusual, so you're just a bit more conscious of the length of the meeting.  So, that can be a way of triggering this slightly shorter meeting. The other thing with the transitions that I think is quite interesting is, is there anything you can do at the start of a meeting so that people can transition into it a bit better?  What I noticed with some of our things is that obviously, not everyone arrives on time.  So, you've got some people that will be there and some people that are coming for another meeting.  So, I will often say when people are joining, "Let's all just take a couple of minutes.  We'll start at five past when everyone's ready to go", rather than make the people who are coming at three minutes past just arrive straight into the conversation.  There might be some other things that you can do.  I know some companies start with a meditation at the start.  I can't quite imagine doing that, but I do know some companies do.  But that for me, I'll often just go, "Let's just take a couple of minutes while everyone's coming in so we're ready to go at five past", can manage some of that stress.  Which one of those could you imagine doing, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: All of them.  I like all of those ideas.  And actually, one of the podcasts I was listening to, I was listening to a podcast about meetings to prepare for a podcast about meetings, which is always interesting.  But one of the examples they gave in that was, if you choose a recurring meeting that you own, so it belongs to you and you can just update the invite, if you make it shorter, they said that most of the time people don't notice and that nobody ever asks for it to go back to a longer meeting, it just doesn't happen.  And every time they've researched standard meetings, they are always just as effective as any other meeting, but they are always shorter, because part of it's also that you're uncomfortable.  Standing up, there's only so long people kind of want to stand up for. I was trying to imagine you taking more breaks, as somebody who doesn't take loads of breaks, and I think often deprioritises breaks in favour of getting the job done and being very efficient.  Have those pictures of the brain, have they changed what you might do, do you think?

Helen Tupper: No, but I mean, they're very interesting.

Sarah Ellis: Say what you really think!  I was like, "Maybe this is the moment where she starts taking breaks".

Helen Tupper: No, but I don't like arriving in a meeting and downloading stress onto other people.  I don't like that.  And so, that idea of kind of starting better in terms of my brain, it really resonated with me seeing those peak transitions.  So, that's made me think something differently.  And then I think what I would do, and we'll come on to this because Sarah and I are going to share our top tips, but if you make a meeting 45 minutes in length, what I would value is just five minutes to do some quick actions before I moved on to the next.  Because I think one thing that causes me stress with back-to-back meetings is just the actions accumulating along the way and not seeing any time when they're going to get done.  So, I think, I don't know if I get steadily more distracted, I think I just get steadily more frustrated because of that, and I'm like, "Oh, I've got so much now to do because of all these meetings that I've been in".  That's probably my bigger issue that I would try and address, I think, by if shorter meetings mean that I can get actions done more quickly, I would feel like I was more effective.

Sarah Ellis: And so idea number three, which builds from that, is don't default; decide.  So many meetings happen by default, whether that is time or who's in them.  And so, I think some really good questions to ask are, does it need to be a meeting?  One of the really good ideas that we had from our Squiggly Career community, from a great lady called Melanie Morris, who I actually used to work with, she was saying how much she's using videos to do updates or informs, where you don't need a meeting, you don't need the discussion.  Really good for asynchronous working, so if everyone's working different times in different places.  And she's mentioned really good for when it's hard to get in front of people, like it's just a struggle to find time in people's diary.  And she recommended something called Vidyard, which I had a look at and looks amazing and better than the very basic versions that I've had a go at before.  And so, first of all, just asking that question like, "Is this the right format?  Is it a meeting or actually, is it an email?  Is it a video?" I tested that with someone on our team today where she was saying, "I'm really struggling to find time with you and Helen".  And I said, "Any chance you could do as a video with your key points?" which she duly did that day.  And I've watched it and that's it, done.  Like, "I don't think we need to have that meeting now.  I haven't got any questions, it's really clear".  So, I think that's the first thing.  Just check a meeting is the right answer to what you're trying to achieve. Next, who do we need to involve?  So, I read one example of an organisation where you had to ask permission for more than five people to be in a meeting.

Helen Tupper: Who did you ask?

Sarah Ellis: I think your manager.  I mean I was like, it's not for me, because it feels a bit school-like, doesn't it, like ask my teacher for permission, but I do get their point.  And when I was getting the advice again from Dr Carrie, she always suggests consult widely but meet smally.  So, it doesn't mean you're not going to talk to lots of people but when you're actually meeting, keep it small and be specific.  Decide how long does it need to be.  Back to Helen's point, probably the shorter the better.  No one will ever, I think, be annoyed at you for a short meeting.  Next decision, how am I going to involve everybody to make sure everybody has the chance to contribute?  So, I really like this one, not something we've talked about lots, but back to the original purpose of meetings. Dr Carrie was saying to me that one of the things that's really useful at the beginning of meetings is to get people contributing straight away, early, often and equally as possible.  And I was thinking, I don't think I think about that very often, or I don't think I do that.  I'd be much more likely to say, "What decision do we need to make?" or, "What's the question we're working on today".  And I can definitely think of examples of meetings that we have in our team where not everybody does contribute early or equally, because then everyone feels like part of it, and back to your point, everybody feels really present.  So, I really liked the idea of, how do you get everyone speaking early on?  Because actually, if they're not, then they probably don't need to be there. Then, measure.  So, how are we going to know if these meetings are useful?  Are we going to ask people to rate them?  Are we ever going to review them?  And the top tip that Dr Carrie said to me here was, she was like, "Just do a reset on your highest value meetings, so the ones that really matter most, if it feels too overwhelming to sort it all, and identify whether they are a transform, improve or sunset", which basically means kill it.  And actually, if you just took three meetings a week that you were like, "Well, I have these meetings all the time, they really matter".  Have I asked myself, "Am I in default mode?", which I reckon most of us are with meetings, or, "Have I made really active, intentional decisions about this meeting?"  We can probably just make some changes quite quickly, I suspect, so I liked how practical that was.

Helen Tupper: I actually scanned through my diary before this conversation, and I was trying to look at the meetings that I had, and I was trying to work out if I was going to change them, what would I change?  And also, what kind of meetings were in my diary.  And actually, a lot of our time, for mine and Sarah's time, is spent with organisations delivering training.  It might look like a meeting in our diary, but that's a moment to do what we do.  And so I kind of took those out when I was looking, and I was looking at internal meetings, and they were a mixture of one-to-one conversations with people in the team, and progressing certain projects that we've got.  And I thought, actually, I didn't look at my diary and go, "They're the wrong meetings to be in there".  I think it was an interesting -- it was quite validating actually.  You know sometimes meetings, you might feel like, "Oh, gosh, I'm in lots of meetings".  To me, actually, it wasn't about killing any meetings that I've got, it was about improving the quality of them.  So, I do think there's a quality/quantity thing with meetings.  And you've got to be, "What is it that you need to fix?"

Sarah Ellis: I also had the same reflection when I was -- we've ended up diving quite deep into meetings over the past few days, and I do also wonder whether we have the luxury of maybe when you're smaller, and this is a sort of hypothesis from me, you're sort of starting from scratch and so you do tend to start a bit more with the essentials, maybe it's easier to be a bit more intentional.  Whereas, this podcast I was listening to today said, "Loads of people at start organisations, particularly big ones, and then you're just in a meeting from the start and maybe you don't even ever know why, but also you just stay in it forever". If I think back to the big companies that you and I have both been part of, I was in way more meetings, way more meetings that weren't in my control.  It was both quantity of meetings and very, very mixed quality, I would say.  Definitely more of, "Well, I have to be here, even if I'm not that useful".  I don't think I've ever had a conversation about, "Are these meetings the right meetings?  Have we really done that decide versus default?"  And so, I do wonder whether we are lucky, to some extent, because we do what we do and we're smaller and you have that ability, almost if we were in a meeting that didn't matter, we would straightaway be like, "Well, why are we doing it?"  But I don't think I've always been in that position to be able to do that.

Helen Tupper: I agree.  I think when I was in Microsoft, I would say there was a micro-meeting culture, which is where you could decide in your team, "Oh, this is how we're going to approach meetings".  But then a different department, who might put meetings in your diary, had a different meeting culture, or the US had a different meeting culture, and you're kind of competing with all those.  So, I think actually probably what helps in that context is to get a few different stakeholders, who are probably in different teams where the meetings are flowing from, to maybe agree an approach.  And then, the measurement of those meetings probably becomes even more important, because you're trying to show demonstrably that it's better if we do it in this way. So, I wanted to close today with our personal top tips that we do to try and make meetings as effective as possible.  So, Sarah, what is your top tip?

Sarah Ellis: To rotate responsibility for meetings.  So, I think this is a really useful way for everybody to feel involved and included, and I think sometimes there's an assumption that a certain person has to lead a meeting or the most senior person has to lead a meeting, and I just think that's often not true.  And then, it also shares the accountability and responsibility for things like setting the agenda, so not always the same person who has to write the questions or frame the decisions, and also not always the same person who has to write up those actions or share them, which might in the future not even be a person.  There's AI that can do a fair bit of that for you today.

Helen Tupper: And my one's probably obvious because I think I've referenced it a few times, but it's to do as many actions as possible in the meeting.  Often, some that are more involved that I need to think about, I can't do.  But sometimes if it's, "Oh, actually, we need to send a quick email [or] could we just check in the status of that project", rather than that being another thing that I will add, I will often say, "Can you just give me two minutes, I'll get that sorted now".  And I feel like that progress in parallel with the meeting, that might be really annoying for some people that I have meetings with, but to be honest, it's much more likely that it gets done than if I put it on a list and I never get to it.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think I've seen you do it and it's not for me, I think it's fair to say, as in it's not something that I would do.  And I think initially, I found it a bit distracting.  But knowing you, it's fine because I know you very well, but I think it's probably something where you definitely have to signal, almost like, "I'm just going to press pause for two minutes to do this now, because if I don't, I'm going to struggle to find the time to get it done".  And then almost, I think, if people know that's what you're doing and you've got very positive intent behind it, then they know they're not losing you, they're not losing your focus or they're not losing your attention, it's just that you're trying to make progress because you know it's important.  So, yeah I think you just have to say out loud what you're doing, because it is quite an unusual thing to do and it does sometimes feel like I lose you a bit because it's like, you've gone off to another place or space to then send an email or check on it and I'm like -- I think my brain gets a bit frantic just watching you be that efficient.

Helen Tupper: I'd like more talking-and-doing meetings.  I don't mind having a meeting with you for 45 minutes if it's talking and doing.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I'm the same, discussing and doing.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, exactly.  So, hopefully that has been helpful for you.  We'll summarise it all in the PodSheet.  We'll put those brilliant pictures of brains and we will credit the research that we've done.  And then if you'd like to join us in a conversation with PodPlus, that will be on the Thursday morning of the week that this episode comes out.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening.  We hope you found that useful and that it helps you to make those meetings matter.  Let us know if you have any feedback or ideas for future episodes.  We're just helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com, and we always really appreciate hearing your feedback and thoughts and ideas.  But that's everything for this week, thank you so much for listening and bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.