Go Faster, Meet Less

HOW much would you give to slash the number of meetings you attend while, simultaneously, making those that you do participate in platforms for motivation and dynamic thinking? Are you ready for such a revolution?City insurance underwriters, Faraday, set out to achieve this in response to a realisation that meetings were taking too much time and could be streamlined to make more impact and add more value to the business.Faraday's chosen partner in this radical initiative was performance training company Stirling Training Consultants (STC). Rob Cram, STC's managing director, outlined the approach taken. "Faraday called us in because they were determined to reduce the amount of management time that was tied up in meetings. They suspected they could make significant savings; but they just didn't realise how much. After we consulted with Faraday's directors, hard targets were set that 25 per cent less man hours should be spent in meetings across the organisation, 10O per cent of meetings should start on time and 75 per cent should finish early. Such targets are key to success. When you want change you need strong and decisive leadership and these figures gave Faraday's managers a clear view of what was required and a way to measure their success."As a result of this directive - and the leadership commitment that these targets should be met - managers and teams radically overhauled their approach. Wherever possible they reduced the amount of meetings held; for example many weekly meetings were rescheduled to a fortnightly basis and all meetings were kept short and to the point. Furthermore, only those people who were essential to each meeting were invited to participate. For the first time in a long while managers saw a way to take back control of their meetings' schedule rather than feeling that their meetings' rota was controlling them. But so what? Did the business benefit?Impact on the organisationGary Bass, Claims director at Faraday, suggested that the business has indeed benefited and not only from managers freeing uptheir time. "Regaining control of their schedules has certainly relieved pressure on managers but the key issue for Faraday as a business is about how to make meetings add value to ongoing projects. That was the great prize. This training has helped us to see that we can be far more proactive and drive our meetings much harder than before in order to get the results we want."Mr Cram confirms that the way a manager drives a meeting is critical to the outcome. "Imagine you have a flight to catch and that you need to get core topics discussed and decisions made in half an hour. If you focus this intensely then have no doubt, you will cover all the ground. This is the 21st century approach to meetings. They have to deal with the essentials, fast and effectively, and this reguires a completely different focus from both the person facilitating the meeting and from attending participants."How do you actually improve meetings?The approach taken by Faraday has been to tackle all aspects of meeting management. This hasn't only covered the organisation's existing meeting culture but also the way meetings are structured and the expectation of all participants.Mr Cram said: "Old style meetings are run through passive agendas. You probably know them well; they start with Apologies from those who can't attend and end with Any Other Business. Is this inspiring? I don't think so. Getting radical with meetings means ending this complacent practice and, instead, working with actionorientated objectives. This approach focuses on the business priorities that the team needs to resolve and requires that every participant come to the meeting with 'thought through' Ideas on how this can be achieved. The agreements reached are the only outputs reguired."This revolutionary approach to meetings will appeal to managers who are performance-minded. It requires that every participant in every meeting comes ready to add value. …