A well-designed agenda should work when it’s “mostly broken.” If unforeseen circumstances render an agenda impossible to execute, it was too brittle to begin with.
—JAMES MACANUFO CREATIVE DIRECTOR, PIXEL PRESS AND COAUTHOR, GAMESTORMING
Meeting derailments happen despite good intentions and solid preparation. It’s frustrating when you put time and energy into preparing a plan that didn’t work out. It feels disrespectful to you and the attendees who came prepared.
But all is not lost. The basic components that make up a meeting agenda are still present. The duration is not unlimited: there is a beginning, middle, and end. There are a quantifiable number of people present. Those people carry a limited set of expectations—ideas in their brains about why they showed up in the first place. Dave could have designed a better situation by not being tied to his agenda and instead prioritizing three things:
• What ideas did he intend to explore?
• How did the people in the room expect to receive those ideas (or were they expecting entirely different ideas)?
• How much time did he have to get through the material?
It’s good to stay flexible about agendas, but important to be crystal clear about the three core elements of agenda building: ideas, people, and time. Sticking to these three elements, while being flexible about how you get there, keeps an agenda from being too brittle.
Count Your Ideas, Then Count Your People
The hour-long business meeting often ends up on your calendar because calendaring software (and the clock) defaults to that length of time. An hour is longer than necessary for a quick check-in, but depending on the group, it might not be long enough to fully explore many ideas or “just-complex-enough concepts.” So, first, count how many of these you intend to address. That number gives you the ability to assess a meeting’s scale.
How much information comprises a “just-complex-enough” concept? Here’s an example—one of Dave’s six design principles was “to keep the customer’s eye on the ball.” It’s a common pitfall in software design to overwhelm users with too many options. To combat that tendency, Dave recommended that the most logical next step should be obvious on each screen. A single complex concept is simply a couple of sentences that describe a single piece of information—what you might fit on a sticky note (see Figure 3.1).
FIGURE 3.1 This much information is in a single, “just-complex-enough” concept.
It’s not too difficult to keep in mind what Dave means when he says “keep the customer’s eye on the ball.” Now to put that idea into the context of a meeting, two people need to reach an agreement on that idea—to have the same meaning in their minds on which to base further conversation. Simple math dictates that there is a single point of agreement between two people. You might assume that for each additional person added to a group, you would add one more point of agreement. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
For three people, those points of agreement jump to three; for five, they elevate to 10; and seven, they leap all the way up to 21. Crowded conversations of 12 people make getting everyone on the same page painfully difficult, as you can see by just counting the lines in Figure 3.2, illustrating a points-of-agreement model.
FIGURE 3.2 A points-of-agreement model, with three variations: 3 people: 3 points of agreement (Doable!) 7 people: 21 points of agreement (Overwhelming.) 12 people: 66 points of agreement (Nearly impossible!)
When you add one person to a meeting, you aren’t just seeking that one person’s new agreement. You are adding as many points of agreement as there are people who are already involved. Increasing the number of people in a meeting will scale up the complexity quickly. If you oversee a meeting’s planning and can control who is being invited, start by capping it at six or seven people.
If more than seven people cannot be avoided or it’s simply out of your hands, write down the reason that each person needs to be there in a simple statement. What is their anticipated goal? Make sure that each attendee knows your intention for inviting them. If you use calendaring software, include those intentions in the meeting invitation itself, or email each person what your take on their assumptions might be, just before the meeting, as a reminder. This will help them remember their role right before they join and get them in the correct frame of mind. You can revisit those expectations at the beginning of the conversation by writing them publicly before you get started.
The points-of-agreement model conveys the idea visually that adding more people makes the discussion more complex. This is one issue affecting Dave’s unsuccessful presentation. Dave has eight people to deal with (including himself), and as you saw, some of those people have different expectations about the intentions of the meeting. Here’s how Dave could have adjusted his agenda as soon as this became a problem: break into two smaller groups.
DAVE’S ORIGINAL DESIGN PRINCIPLE AGENDA
• Review a principle (8 minutes).
• Discuss a principle (2 minutes).
• (Repeat six times.)
DAVE’S ADJUSTED DESIGN PRINCIPLE AGENDA
• Identify two subgroups: a design group (design team) and a business outcomes group (leadership).
• Review a principle (8 minutes).
• Break into subgroups to discuss principle (2 minutes).
• (Repeat six times.)
By breaking into two groups, Dave isolates different expectations of the agenda (in this case, business outcomes versus design application efforts) to keep them from becoming distracting tangents at best and a derailing debate at worst.
Get to Know People
If there’s a lot at stake for a meeting, different expectations can be explored with pre-meeting interviews. Dave had sent out agendas in advance, but he could also have spent time getting feedback on the agenda in one-on-one conversations. Conducting “meetings-before-the-meeting” is good for high-stakes meetings, especially when they are more complex workshops or intensive working sessions.
Advance interviews with attendees can make the difference between people getting the right story or the wrong one by previewing how much alignment exists among meeting participants. These interviews also provide content to build and supplement an agenda. You’ll discover positive ways in which you can challenge your audience and where to push them out of their comfort zones. Use these basic guidelines when conducting pre-meeting interviews:
• Maintain an “off-the-record” and friendly tone.
• Find a personal connection to the interview subject early if possible. Look for shared background or interests, such as a city you’ve lived in or a sports team you like. If it’s someone that you feel intimidated by, like a CEO, keep it light and general. Just don’t force it or spend too much time on it; the goal is just to open a trusting connection.
• Gather specific expectations regarding the meeting’s purpose and outcomes.
• Ask clear and direct questions, such as “What will this thing that we are building do? How does that help your business?”
Even with pre-interviews, you might find yourself in a group that is pursuing too many