Do you actually need a meeting?

Ok, confession time. When you arrange a meeting, do you take the time to think about the “why”? 

And I don’t just mean a meeting title e.g. “team meeting”, “roadmap”, “retrospective”. 

If you’re preparing for a meeting about your roadmap, what question do you think needs answering?

Is it:

What do you think we might miss out on if we follow our roadmap?

or

What information do you think will help us to assess whether we’re heading in the right direction?

or

If you could choose what we can work on next, what would you choose and why?

…

Based on that question, do you actually need a meeting?

Is asynchronous communication e.g. Slack, emails, video, enough?

If you do need to meet, what is the purpose of getting people together?

Is it that you want to create a space where people feel safe to ideate and suggest novel and even whacky ideas?

Is it that you want to unearth underlying issues that you suspect are arising with the roadmap?

Is it that you want to improve relationships between stakeholders so they work better together?

If so:

Who do you think you should, and shouldn’t invite? Meetings are as much about who you leave out as who you invite.

Taking a bit of time to think before sending out that invite means that time and money aren’t wasted. Instead, people will value your meetings and make the time for them.

If you want to learn more about transforming meetings and making them valuable, then why not come along to Agile Delta’s training?

I’ll leave you with the question:

When you arrange a meeting, do you take the time to think about the “why”?