Whaddaya hear, whaddya say? Welcome to episode 29 of the Career Consigliere podcast: your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene. We’re back with you once again for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so! Last time we talked all about useless meetings and how they usually play out. And at the very end, I promised you that we’d spend next time talking about the RIGHT way to set up and manage meetings, so guess what folks: next time has arrived! Yes, today we’re going to launch a little mini-series on the consigliere’s very own three-stage approach of managing meetings: what I call the set-up, the execution, and the post-mortem. This exact method I’m about to lay out for you served me well for years out in the corporate world, and if used properly, it’ll do the same for you. No data or fancy statistics here: just some wisdom from a guy who’s been around. This will be the first of three episodes, one to focus on each of the phases. I’ll be honest, I was originally going to try doing it all in one episode, and when I was hitting the 90 minute mark I realized changes needed to be made. Phase one, coming up! Podcast land, lettsssss get it!
The set-up
If you ask me, the best meetings are a result of a good set-up. Now if you can relate to this type of content enough to be listening to this show, I’m going to assume that in your corporate grind you use one of the big meeting scheduling packages that links to your email: likely Outlook, or Google Calendar, or something very close to it. And I can tell you, setting up meetings in any one of those platforms is a breeze. They give you everything you need, and all you have to do is type the text in the invite. But that’s where an ineffective meeting starts: WAY too many people get lazy on this, and wind up setting off a chain reaction of misaligned expectations and poor communication throughout the entire duration of whatever project the meeting is about. So forget all that, put it out of your mind, make believe you’ve never set up a meeting in your life and heed my every word because you’ll want to hear this!
Step 1: pick the time where the most people that you’re inviting are available. And if it’s only a handful of people, you should be able to find a time that suits EVERYONE, even if it means pushing it back into the following week. Doing this shows that you looked at the calendar and did your due diligence to be respectful of other peoples’ schedules. You ever get a meeting invite that there’s no possible way you can attend, and since you know the person who sent it, you know there’s just no way they actually bothered to look at the calendar availability? That’s disrespectful, and nobody likes it when you take their time for granted. Now don’t get me wrong: if you have 60 people on the invite, you’ll almost never be able to line up an available time. You’ll get probably 70% if you do it far enough in advance, but even then people are bound to be traveling on business, have vacation scheduled, or whatever the case. In that case, pick the time when the most people seem available. And for anyone who can’t make it? Record the meeting and distribute it after so that anyone who missed it can still get up-to-speed after the fact. Just be careful what you say on a recorded line......you don’t want to be the next start of Youtube’s “meeting fails” channels that are rapidly growing in popularity these past few years!
Step 2 of the set-up: What you write. Real simple here, people: it doesn’t have to be much at all, but it DOES need to be well-structured. Gonna skip the obvious stuff here: if by this point in your career you don’t know to spell words properly, use the right punctuation marks, and write in complete sentences, then shame on you: and shame on the masses of people who fail to do this every....single....day. But they don’t listen to this show, so screw ‘em. Your invite should of course have a good title: one that gives a person an at-a-glance reference of what’s on their calendar. It should reference the name of the project, or whatever task to give the recipients some context.
And then, in the body of the invite, you’ll need three other things: The what, the how, and the why. The what: a brief reference to what will be discussed. The how: what specific action items your attendees can expect to bear witness to in the meeting. And finally, the why: a brief statement to let everyone know what’s in it for them, and why taking time out of their schedule to join your meeting will benefit them. Real easy example for you: let’s say you’re setting up a meeting to kickoff a cost reduction project. The title of your meeting invite can simply be “Cost Reduction Project Kickoff”. And then the body can say something like this: Hi, all: this meeting will mark the launch of the cost reduction project. During this session, we’ll be reviewing the plans and establishing some of the main metrics the team will be tracking throughout the duration of the project. This will get all parties on the same page and manage expectations as the project evolves. That’s it! That’s literally all you need. I always ended them with a goodwill sign off, something like “Feel free to contact me with any questions in advance”, or something along those lines: Be creative, do your thing, just be professional about it.
Next, you should attach any relevant documentation you have (usually Power Point slides) for everyone to review ahead of time. If you have a formal meeting agenda already prepared, this would be a great time to include it. It’s definitely a best practice to have this ready ahead of time, but it won’t always work that way. Sometimes when you’re against the clock on a tight timeline, it’s better to get the invite sent just to block off the time on everyone’s calendars. If that’s the case, and you don’t have the full agenda or other tangible content ready just yet, just mention somewhere in the body of the message that you’ll be adding this at some point before the meeting happens: the big scheduling tools will let you do it. Just be sure to actually go back and add it: anyone who’s good at staying on top of their calendars will certainly appreciate you being proactive on distributing the content: not to mention, it’ll make you look razor sharp to anyone influential that might be joining this meeting!
How hard was that?? You spent, what, 3 minutes writing that? And now everyone knows exactly what to expect, and probably won’t even NEED to ask you any questions ahead of time because it’s all been so clearly laid out. You never know where meeting invites are going to wind up, either. Especially on big, complex, highly political projects, it’s easy to accidentally leave people out: and when you do, others will usually forward the invite to them anyway. And sometimes, senior management winds up dropping in to “say hello” during your meeting, so always be formal and professional when you’re writing the invite and including content. I’m a big advocate of using humor and personality in the office, don’t get me wrong: I had quite the reputation for “genuine” behavior in the office: the politically correct term everyone used to tell me I was off the wall! But with invites, it’s all business. You don’t know where they’re going to wind up, and you always want to represent yourself properly and professionally.
And finally, step 3 of the set-up phase: pressing send. Two things happen here: one, you conduct a final quality check to make sure everything is good: right date, right time, which is especially important if you have people joining from other parts of the country or the world, where the clock might say something different. Make sure everything is buttoned up, all the attachments are the latest version, all that good stuff. At this point, I actually recommend getting everything setup, drafted out, and holding off on pressing send. Give it a break, and come back to it in an hour or two and re-read it with a rested perspective to make sure you’re comfortable with it after having iced yourself for a bit. It can be easy to get all caught up in your head when you’re “in the zone” crafting an invite, so this little hiatus can be a big help. And one final thing before you press send: you’ll want to consider when the recipients will receive the message. For example, if you send it out at 6pm on a Friday, do you really want everyone’s phone lighting up while they’re eating pizza and watching movies with their family? Maybe that one can wait until Monday morning. Or if you’re in the US and your recipients are in India, try your best to avoid sending something that might trigger a notification that wakes the person up out of their sleep. You can’t completely avoid it this day and age, but do your best to be respectful, and to make sure the recipients get the invite at a time when they’re likely to be awake, alert, and receptive to what you’re sending.
There was a time when everyone’s work was limited only to what they did on their computer. You have some people who still operate that way, but unfortunately the lines between home and personal life have blurred, thanks largely to mobile work phones. Those email and instant message notifications light up like a Christmas tree, and a lot of people are never truly “done” working for the day. With this in mind, there's no "perfect" time to send an invite, but do the best you can. If you want a rule of thumb, try to send them out when at least half the recipients will get the invite during normal business hours for them. You’ll have to do some math here if you’re dealing with a global population, but most scheduling software factors all that in for you already, so it shouldn’t be too hard. It just sends a good message: you think people don’t notice, but believe me, they do, and they appreciate it.
So that’s phase one of effective meetings, “the set-up” in a nutshell. Let’s recap and summarize with today’s.......consigliere call to action. In the setup phase, we have three steps, the first of which is planning. Be respectful of everyone’s schedule and set everything up far enough in advance. If it’s a meeting with 2 or 3 other people that you know well, you might be able to get away with cramming something in last minute. But if it’s a big project with a lot of interested stakeholders involved, sending everything out two weeks in advance ensures A: more calendar availability for recipients, and B: that your attendees will have time to plan and come ready to discuss whatever the topic. And if you have important stakeholders that aren’t able to attend for some reason? Record the meeting! Most of the enterprise platforms have this feature, and many make it very, very easy to manage. Make the recording available after the fact for anyone who couldn’t attend, and you’re golden. Good planning like this gets the meeting process started off on the right track.
Step 2: What you write. Come on, people: we’re educated adults here. Anything less than good grammar and punctuation is unacceptable. Unfortunately that’s not the reality: I’ve seen very high-ranking people in more than one company misspell basic words, completely ignore punctuation, and literally type the entire message of an email in the subject line! But just because our role models are doing this doesn’t make it right. Trust me, nothing bad can happen if you represent your meeting content professionally: it sends nothing but good messages. You’ll also want to call your meeting something easy to understand, and indicative of what will be discussed. You want just a short phrase here: a few words at most, just to let the recipients know what it is when they inevitably forget. And when they glance at their calendar in a frantic haste, your effective title will tell them everything they need to know, in a pinch. In the body, we want solid statements for the what, how, and why. This will help everyone understand what’s going to be discussed, what they can expect, and how it will benefit everyone involved. This is a GAME CHANGER for catching (and keeping) the attention of busy people whose influence and input your meeting needs. And also, be sure to attach/include any relevant content you have on-hand. Doesn’t have to be the final finished product yet, you can always go back and add it later, but for anything you want your attendees to be familiar with in advance, this is the time to distribute it.
And finally, pressing send. Type everything out, and put it on ice for a while. This is especially good to do when it’s a high visibility situation and you have a lot of people involved. It prevents your raw thoughts from being sent out and allows you time to disconnect from the situation and come back with a fresh and rested perspective before sending out an important communication like this. Again, this isn’t as big a deal with more informal meetings, but it’s an excellent habit to get into for the more important, higher-stakes stuff. Invites and communications get questioned all the time, and they can wind up in unintended hands. Think of it like this: would you be comfortable with the CEO of the company seeing what you wrote? Interesting take, right? Mull that over, and we’ll be back with phase 2, “The execution”, next time.
Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today. But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode very soon. As they say in the industry: no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal! If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts. Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for a private consult, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer. And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this: Who’s the boss in your career? You, nobody else.
