Have a PAL for Your Next Meeting

Bill Cashell

One of the most frustrating time wasters is an ineffective meeting. You know the type. Some people show up late, some people are not prepared, there is no agenda and the meeting wanders aimlessly until someone decides they have to leave.

There are a lot of components to having a successful meeting. Here is one simple way to get your meeting back on track. Have a PAL.

PAL is an acronym for Purpose, Agenda and Length. This is the starting point for a successful meet5ng. Lets look at each of them.

Purpose Too many meeting are scheduled without a definite purpose. Often someone will say, “We need to get together and talk about this. Can you set up a meeting?”

You think you have a purpose, but is it really clear? To clarify your purpose, ask what the outcome of the meeting is. If it is information sharing, decide what information needs to be shared, how it will be presented, who will present it and who will need to know this information. This will lead you to identifying who should attend the meeting. If your purpose is to make a decision, you must decide what information must be available to make the decision and who must be present to make this decision. Nothing is more frustrating that spending an hour in a meeting and not reaching a decision. The purpose must be clear to everyone.

Agenda The single greatest key to a successful meeting is an agenda. Without that, it is like going on a road trip without a map. You don’t know where you are going and you don’t know when you have arrived.

An agenda does not have to be difficult to create. It starts with the purpose, which you already have now. If there are several items to discuss, make sure they are all included and the right people are invited. Make sure they all know what their role is and what is expect of them. Then include the meeting location and the time of the meeting. The key to success now is to make sure you follow the agenda. This is the role of the meeting leader.

Length So many organizations seem to think there is something magical about an hour. It is amazing how many meetings are scheduled for one hour, and the law is that meetings will expand or contract to their allotted time no matter what is accomplished.

As you create your agenda, decide how long will be necessary to cover each item. If something must be discussed before a decision is made, this may be hard to determine. The key to this is to start the discussion by stating that we must make a decision at a certain point in time. This helps avoid getting sidetracked on other issues. If you find that there is not enough information to make the decision, table the item until the information can be obtained and move on to the next item.

When you are creating your agenda, assign a time to each item instead of the entire meeting. Then add up all of the time you allotted and use that for the length of the meeting. If your meeting adds up to 47 minutes, that is what you schedule. Try to avoid scheduling too much for one meeting. The longer a meeting lasts, the less effective it usually becomes. Also remember that some people will run from meeting to meeting. Since most meetings are scheduled on the hour, try to end your meeting 5 to 10 minutes before the hour to allow people to get to their next meeting. If one meeting runs over, it can have a domino effect for following meetings. Make sure you stay on time and you will have more successful meetings.