Making Time for What’s Important
Feeling like there are too many meetings on a specific topic or project? or that you're spending a lot of time talking about the project but not enough time working on it?
Here’s an idea that has worked well for us in the past – give it a try!
Almost-No-Meetings Week
Align
Gather with key doers and decision-makers from the project or subject area. Together:
Pick a week that doesn't already have substantial commitments. We call it almost-no-meetings week because there will likely be some commitments that are both valuable and difficult to reschedule. Find the best option in the next month and make the most of it.
Select an objective to focus on. Pick something that’s invigorating, important, and sufficiently urgent that making progress on it will make a real difference in your focus area.
Set specific targets for that week that will make progress toward and perhaps achieve the objective. Aim for output or outcome targets, rather than input goals. We’re looking for targets that have a meaningful answer to the question, “so what?”
Agree on the time for a (short!) daily standup to coordinate well toward achieving the week’s targets. We’ve found that 30 minutes may be more realistic than 15 minutes, particularly for the first day or two. But aim to keep the standup as focused and brief as you can, while getting through what’s important.
Prepare
After working through the above items, the project manager, coordinator, or simply a willing facilitator will:
Compile the objective and targets for the week in the team’s typical goal- or activity-tracking spot.
Communicate to the team and those impacted about almost-no-meetings week, the objective and targets you’re going after, and that you’ll showcase progress soon after the week is complete.
Cancel all meetings related to the topic or project. Ask to reschedule non-time-sensitive meetings. (If a few non-project meetings remain on people’s calendars, that’s life. Aim for nearly clear days.)
Set up a daily standup with the key participants moving forward the week’s targets
Participants: Keep the invite list as tight as you can, including only those directly working to achieve the week’s targets
Goal: Make sure everyone has the access, information, resources, and support they need to accomplish the week's targets
Agenda: Each individual or small team shares their headway toward the targets, what they’re focused on now/next, and anything needed from the rest of the team to make progress
Consider creating a calendar hold for the week, so meetings don’t sneak back on the calendar.
Schedule a retrospective the Monday or Tuesday after the almost-no-meetings week
Participants: Individuals included in the daily standups
Goal: Learn from the week of experimentation, and incorporate improvements into the ways of working going forward
Agenda: How did the week go? What from the previous week do we want to keep doing? What do we want to adjust in our typical approach and rhythms based on what we learned together?
Schedule a showcase the Tuesday or Wednesday after the almost-no-meetings week
Participants: Individuals included in the daily standups plus project or topic leadership and those directly impacted by the area
Goal: Demonstrate the progress the team made by focusing on specific targets and freeing up most of the day to make progress toward them
Agenda: Walk through the outputs or outcomes from the previous week, focusing on the business value that comes from the achievements. Share what the team will refine going forward based on lessons learned from the previous week.
(Agile practitioners will recognize many of the “experiment” tactics – we’re essentially arguing for more a more agile approach to making progress here, to shake up methods of working that aren’t getting the results we seek.)
Execute
With almost all meetings but daily standups canceled, it’s time to get to work!
The manager/coordinator/facilitator’s job is to:
Point the team to objectives and targets
Ask why any targets aren’t progressing as expected
Clear roadblocks for team members, like getting information, access, or resources
Each team member’s job is to:
Advance their portion of the objectives and targets as expected
Raise their hand if they have any roadblocks or needs the team or manager can address
A week of lots of heads-down and small team work can be really productive – and exhausting. The manager should also watch out for energy levels and consider what will motivate and keep the team engaged. This could include recognition in standups or extra unstructured interaction outside of critical productivity times (since those meetings we canceled represented opportunities to connect).
Reflect and Showcase
With focus and perseverance, we hope the team will make impressive progress during the week. After it’s complete, it’s time to identify lessons learned and showcase the good work!
Gather for a candid, constructive retrospective early in the next week. The goal is to learn from experimentation and update our ways of working the rest of the time accordingly. This will likely require evolutionary, not revolutionary, changes. That’s okay, pick the top couple of refinements the team identifies, be clear about when, how, and why you’re including them, and incorporate them into future weeks and months. You can always keep experimenting and refining over time.
(If the team didn’t in fact make progress during almost-no-meetings week, then we may be misdiagnosing the challenge. Maybe it’s not that we need more time to get work done, but something isn’t quite right within roles, capabilities don’t fit well with roles, or our objective wasn’t actually clear and/or compelling. This may take a bit more investigation and experimentation to understand – listen for clues in the retrospective and aim to exercise curiosity rather than judgment.)
You also want to show off the good work that was accomplished in the almost-no-meetings week. Gather with the core project team and those leading or impacted by the effort. Remind them of the objectives and targets you had coming into the week and share what was accomplished during it. Highlight the outputs or outcomes with the greatest business value, connecting them with who is expected to benefit.
If you didn’t achieve some targets, explain in a non-defensive way why they weren’t met and what the group has learned from the experience. Understanding roadblocks or unproductive ways of working can be important lessons from the week.
Closing Thoughts
If all of this sounds like an incremental approach to adopt more agile ways of working – you’ve got it! Oftentimes the feeling that we have too many meetings to make progress means that:
Our objectives aren’t actually clear
Our targets aren’t specific enough, attainable, or motivating
Our ways of working focus more on inputs than outputs
By providing clarity on objectives and targets, and temporarily stripping away the typical ways of working, we can get a sense for which of our typical practices actually contribute toward progress, and which turn out just to be noise.
If you’d like to talk through setting up an almost-no-meetings week with your team or project, I’d be happy to connect. You can schedule time with me here: https://calendly.com/kim_ehrman/30-minute-meeting
