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Leadership Communication – How to Hold Planning Meetings | Conference Speaker

Woman: I’ve called you altogether to lay out a strategy to meet next month’s production deadline. It’s tied so we’ll have to coordinate marketing, production and sales an extremely short notice. I’m sure we can do it. Bob, do you have some thoughts on how we could make it happen?

Bob: The first step is to gear up production. I could put on a third shift at the plant and I can add people on the first and second shifts. That should take care of things in production. As for marketing and sales [voice faded slowly]

Narrator (Jim Cathcart, Conference Speaker): A large number of the meetings we attend are for one purpose. We meet to plan strategies, to plan projects, to plan operations and to plan for production. We even meet just to lay out a plan of how to plan. The only major difference between all these meetings is their primary purpose. And it’s the purpose that determines the best format for that planning meeting. So what we’re going to do now is look at various formats of a planning meeting and explore the ways you can get results that you want from each one of them. Now the purpose of a planning meeting is to create a plan of action or a schedule of activities, so that the decision can be implemented.

And there are just two ways to have a planning meeting. One, by yourself [laughter] or two, with others. If you’re by yourself, the beauty of it is that there are no interruptions, nobody disagrees with you and you get the whole thing done very easily. It’s wonderful, but, most of the plans prepared by only one person have several disadvantages. They tend to be limited in scope and they usually represent only one point of view. When other people are involved in developing a plan, the result is much more effective, because there’s a blend of greater ideas and options, more variety and the others feel a sense of ownership in the plans that they had helped to create.

Among all the types of planning meeting the most obvious is the committee. Now I’ve almost hear you groaning because committees unfortunately are the bud of more jokes than any other single thing in the business world. You’ve heard them. A Camel is a horse put together by committee. A committee is a group of people who independently can’t do anything, but when they get together they can decide as a group that nothing can be done. If you want anything done right, don’t give it to a committee [laughter]. You probably heard those and more. But that leaves us with a question. What really is the purpose of creating a committee?

The answer is that usually to give a group of people responsibility for accomplishing a specific objective or mission. Occasionally, there’s something called a standing committee. A standing committee is one that stays together over an extended period of time. Every time a certain issue comes up related to that committee’s area of responsibility, the committee has to handle it. For instance, in association may have several standing committees, such as, an education committee, a membership committee, possibly a planning committee responsible for the annual planning for the association itself?

Each of these committees has its own functions and responsibilities and may have to take several actions throughout the year. An association’s membership committee’s a good example of this. This people may first lay out the entire membership enrolment plans for the year, what to expect. Then, as people join they keep records. Then they make sure that new members are contacted and oriented to the association. The committee might work with individual chapters of the association, to help stimulate membership growth in their areas. Another type of committee is the task force. A task force is generally assigned one specific task and the members are charged with accomplishing that.

When the task is completed, the task force is dissolved. Right now, let me give you seven guidelines on how to run a committee effectively. Whether it’s a standing committee or a task force. One, again we start with purpose. The members of a committee should know the purpose, the reason for which the committee was formed. Two, each member should have a role of assigned responsibilities. For example, there ought to be a person running the committee who as chairperson, takes the initiative to get things done. Another person should serve as secretary or recorder to capture the ideas and the decision that the group makes.

Third, select the group members of the committee according to what they can contribute to the group. One of the real difficulties with committee meetings is the selection of members is occasionally based on politics or feelings or who somebody thinks should be included, something like “George had been in the committee in the last year, so let’s put him on one”. In other words, committee assignments are used for purposes sometimes other than to get the work done. That’s a real killer.

Narrator: Not only does it not accomplish the results, it doesn’t even come close. Remember to choose the members for a committee by what they can contribute to the group. Four, once you’ve selected the members establish the meeting dates for the committee. Suggest regular meeting dates and then stick to them. There are committees that meet only when necessary. That usually spells death for the committee because sometimes those meetings just don’t happen, other times it works out fine. For example, an ethics committee might only meet when there’s an ethical challenge raised against one of your members. Five, set limits on the lifetime of the committee and establish deadlines for when the group ought to finish their job.

Most groups are more productive when they have a target date or deadline. Six, if it’s going to be an ongoing committee, establish the terms of service for each person. In other words, tell someone that he or she is on the committee for say a year or six months or whatever. Plan for a rotation of people on and off of the committee. This brings in fresh ideas and it keeps everyone alive and enthusiastic. You also need to rotate the leadership of the committee each year or so. Because a leader in a group can tend to set up a recurring pattern almost like a dynasty, so it’s always done in a certain way and flexibility is needed from time to time.

Seven, with any committee make sure the group gives you regular progress reports. If people don’t have to report on their progress they might not make any and nothing would be accomplished at all. Inspect what you expect. Now let’s look at another type of group, the staff meeting. Unlike a committee meeting which usually has a single objective, a staff meeting can have a number of different objectives. A staff meeting is one in which its member are the operating team of the organization. Its purpose is usually to discuss the operations of that organization or at least the direction in which the organization’s headed.

A lot of organizations have staff meetings on a regular basis. Unfortunately, some of those staff meetings can be deadly. I’ve attended staff meetings in the past where the main goal seemed to be the “see how quickly everyone could be put to sleep”. It wouldn’t be the real intend of course, but that’s how it appeared because the meetings were so boring, so meaningless. They were conducted in such a way that is seem whoever called the meeting really didn’t have a reason to meet, except that somewhere a book says that staff meetings are supposed to be held [laughter]. With that admonition the meeting organizer got everyone together, talk for a few minutes and then send everyone back to work.

What a waste! If that’s how your staff meetings come across, after a while, people will get the message that your meetings aren’t going to be worthwhile, so why bother going. They start to look for excuses to show up late or not at all, and if they do show, they’ll come to the meeting anticipating not taking part in it. They’ll give it absolutely no for a thought, they will just show up because they have to. These kinds of meetings eventually become the subject of gossip, ridicule and sarcasm. Not only will the one calling the meeting lose the group’s respect, but the respect people have for the entire organization will tend to diminish as well.

Here are my guidelines for running effective staff meetings. This time there are five. First, call a meeting only when you need a meeting. The main problem with most staff meetings is the routine. It’s as if people say, “its Monday we have to have a staff meeting”. That’s the worst possible reason for holding a meeting. Remember that each meeting cost you a fortune, literally. While the staff is sitting in the meeting the salary meter is ticking. It’s the same time you’re temporarily losing the productivity of everyone who’s there. Make sure there’s a reason for having the meeting or don’t call one at all.

Second, the main objectives of a staff meeting should be one or more of the following; to present ideas, to pose a problem, group decision making, to motivate the staff, to involve more people in what’s going on or simply to reinforce relationships and form more of a team atmosphere among the staff. The third guideline for running effective staff meetings is to always have somewhat of a formal agenda. You don’t necessarily have to print it up and hand it out for a more elaborate meeting that’s a good idea. But it should be an automatic agenda. In other words, it should be one that establishes the regular way you run staff meetings.

Here are some suggestions on what to include on an agenda; a review of what’s been happening since your last meeting, a presentation of new things that have come up, questions or challenges that you’d like to get feedback on, an outline of plans or steps of the new activities you’re going to begin, and a period of time set aside for open dialogue on something that’s relevant to this group. With this kind of an agenda, meeting is much easier to operate. That’s because activities are put in to categories. In that way the staff members know what to expect and then when. It’s just kind of like having old business, new business and so forth. You talk about what has happened since the last meeting, you present new ideas, you talk about questions or challenges that you like to get feedback on, outlines the plans for new actions you’re going to begin and then set aside time for dialogue on something relevant to the group. That gives you more control.

The fourth guideline for an effective staff meeting is to establish an atmosphere that’s upbeat. Look for ways to be creative and be involved. For example, you could have a theme for the meeting or place a music as they’re coming in to the room or generate dialogue the minute they walk in so everybody feels a part of what’s going on. To get the dialogue started, what you might do is stand by the door and greet the people as they come in talk with them. Get them started in the dialogue, ask them questions tell them what you’re going to be covering and ask them if they’d be willing to make a comment about a particular item on the agenda.

Or tell the group what happened in their department in relation to some subject that’s going to be on the agenda. Ask them about their family, involve them in dialogue. Do whatever necessary to get them is talking. So once they arrive at the meeting room they feel like they’re part of what’s going on. Otherwise it can be as deadly as a tomb. Fifth, when you start the meeting walk to front of the room and say something like, “Good morning everybody. Thanks for showing up. I appreciate your being on time today”. Then launch right into the purpose for the meeting and introduce the agenda.

Yet another type of planning meeting is what’s called a brainstorming session. The intent of a brainstorming meeting is to get a group of minds working together for a common cause with no restriction on the generation of new ideas. It’s like creating a storm of thoughts and ideas. Thoughts and ideas that are just bubbling out of each person in the room with no lead, no restriction on them at all. To run a brainstorming meeting effectively, open the session by introducing whatever subject or question you want them to talk about. Write it down, then just let the ideas start flowing. Each idea suggested by one person stimulates ideas in the other people.

The purpose of brainstorming is to first generate a quantity of ideas. Once the quantity has been generated, then you can evaluate the quality of each individual thought. A brainstorming session does not and should not have a structured format similar to other meetings. In brainstorming there are almost no rules. There are certainly no formal agendas. As a matter of fact, the only formal requirement is that it be informal. But brainstorming does have some basic guidelines, and here there are; first, judgment must be withheld. That means participants may not make comments like “That’s a dumb idea” or “That won’t work”, “We tried that before”.

As soon as those kind of comments start to be made, the next person who has an off the wall idea, probably won’t mention it to the group. He’ll be thinking “If I bring this idea up, Jim’s going to shoot it down. I think I’ll just be quiet until I think of a better idea.” When ideas are slowed down, stifled or ridiculed. The flow, that bubbling of ideas stops. You see, ideas are like an exploding firecracker. If one firecracker is ignited in a room full of other firecrackers, there soon going to be a lot of explosions. But if a little shield is placed around that firecracker, and it goes off, all you going to get is one pop and that’s it.

The same thing’s true with ideas. Each idea ignites another, but only if it’s not squelched or shielded by judgment or sarcasm. That leads into the second basic rule of brainstorming which is “quantity is more important than quality”. You might say to the group, “Okay folks the purpose of this meeting is to generate as many ideas about the subject as we can. It don’t matter if the ideas that you suggest is impractical or crazy, offensive or stupid. We want as many ideas as possible and let’s just go for numbers at this point.

We’ll concentrate on the quality of ideas later”. To get the people started, sometimes it’s helpful to begin the flow of ideas with some crazy off the wall ideas from yourself. Once things are on the way another approach that often works, is to ask people if any of the ideas that have been suggested can be combined together with others to form a new idea. It’s very important to create a casual laid back free flowing atmosphere for the brainstorming meeting. If the participants want to come in shorts and sneakers, let them. If they want to take their ties off or roll-up their sleeves or prop-up their feet on the desk that’s fine. If they want to stand up and walk around the room, let them do that too. The main objective is to generate and capture as many great ideas as possible. The more relaxed people are the more easily the ideas will flow. As for the third rule of brainstorming, it is to make sure that you have the tools to capture those ideas. Be certain you have a flip chart or a tape recorder or chalk board. The is the best because it is the most permanent and most flexible. A tape recorder doesn’t provide a visible list of the ideas that came up. The participants can’t see them. The chalk board has to be erased in order to make room for more ideas. But you can take a flip chart, tear each page off as you fill it up and then tape it on the wall with masking tape during the session and people can constantly see the ideas that have come up.

And then you can keep those after the meeting so you can transcribe them. Another good idea’s to have two people writing down the ideas each with their own flip chart. Then they can alternate writing down the ideas so that neither one of them is overwhelmed by the number of ideas that came up. To begin your brainstorming session you might say, “Okay everybody, relax, get comfortable, and get easy. Ellen and Jane are going to serve as our recorders. They got plenty of ink and paper, some let’s consider what we\re here for and start throwing out every idea we can think of. We’ll talk about the quality of the ideas later”.

Then Jane or Ellen or whoever writes at the top of the flip chart’s page the questions you’re there to address. You tear that page off the chart, tape it up on the wall so everyone can keep it in constant view. So that you know what you’re brainstorming about. Then you ask everyone to think only of that question and of ideas that are somehow related to it. I was taking an example, let’s say, you’re trying to find a way to reduce the gasoline expenses for company travel. You might say, “Okay group, we have thirty minutes to do this and I want to get as many ideas as many ideas as we can. Let’s begin”.

You didn’t throw out the first idea but somewhat off the wall in order to stimulate creativity, you say, “You know what? We can get nitrogen powered cars instead of gasoline powered cars”. Someone else says, “Yes, we could take a good train or we could get our own helicopter”, someone else says, “We could buy a bus”. Ideas start flowing like crazy. People might suggest such ideas as, “We could carpool”, “We could buy a van”, “We could hire a limousine service”, “We could get a van service”, “We could get George down there who’s not doing any vital work really, take half of each day and serve as our shuttle bus driver”, someone else says, “We could buy one of those buggies like they’ve got in Disneyland that run people around the parking lot and use that as our conveyance.

We could set up a conveyor belt and have people [laughing] sit on it. Someone else says, “We could built an escalator”. All of a sudden all these ideas start to come in. You may see that out of all these ideas, a whole bunch of them may be ridiculous and totally impractical. But, a few of those ideas are darn good. Think about it a second. Carpooling, that’s a good idea. Having a part time shuttle driver, that’s a very good idea. You can arrange a contract with a taxi company to buy a quantity of time and get a reduced rate or something like that. Obviously, there are a number of things you could do.

But if all you did was think logically about how to reduce gasoline consumption, you’d probably wouldn’t come up with nearly as many creative ideas. Certainly, you will get a few but not a flood of ideas and all it takes is one winner. One kind of an off the wall idea that when boiled down to its essence, really has the seed of a winner in it. That can save all the money you want to save or solve all the problems that you have to solve. That’s why brainstorming’s such a good thought. Not only is it really stimulating for a group, but a lot of the ideas that may not seem useful to your situation, may be very useful later on or somewhere else in the company. Once the ideas have been generated and it’s kind of come down to a trickle of new thoughts, stop the process and shift into evaluation.

At this point in the process, the group takes a look at each idea that was listed and discusses the pros and cons of it, until the best three to five ideas have been identified as possible solutions to your problem. [Background music] Again, be sure that the evaluation of an idea suggested never takes place at the time it’s suggested. But only takes place later during the evaluation phase which is the last phase of the brainstorming process. Because, if evaluation occurs when the idea comes up, it may stop any further ideas. [Background music continues] Next, I’d like to talk about the annual planning meeting.

I’ve found that a very powerful way to hold an annual planning meeting is to do it in the form of a retreat. Which is nothing more than a strategic planning session held outside of the office away from your place of business. This way there are no interruptions and all the energy can be devoted to a long term planning. I’ve worked with nearly a hundred organizations as their facilitator for the annual planning sessions. Facilitators simply ask questions, summarize responses and make sure things follow a logical flow. In this way, the people who attend the retreat can concentrate on creating a solid plan without worrying about running the meeting or seeing to it that a quiet member is getting involved or seeing to it that you’re following the flow.

You see, if you’re trying to simultaneously run a meeting and be a participant, it’s very difficult to do a good job of each. Let me show you what I mean, say you’re leading a group discussion on how to penetrate a market with a new product. While taking suggestions from the group, you come up with a great idea yourself. You present your idea, you write it down and you start selling it to the group. After doing that two or three times, you may find that some of the people stop contributing. What’s the problem? Well it may be that there a little be intimidated by you’re talking so much. They may think, “Well, you know my idea’s not important as his or hers so I’ll just keep quiet”.

All of a sudden, you find yourself the main contributor. You say, “Gee Ben, you haven’t said much, what are your thoughts on this” Ben says, “You’re doing okay. Go ahead”. On the surface everything seems fine. You’re being courteous. Ben’s happy. But under the surface, you see Ben isn’t really involved. He’s only making a token contribution, not a real one. There’s a big difference and it has a considerable impact on the effectiveness of the meeting. To run your planning retreat I’d suggest you avoid picking one of the people in charge of the company. Select someone to facilitate the meeting who’s done that sort of thing in the past and knows how to do it well.

Let me give you some guidelines on how to effectively conduct a planning retreat. First, ask yourself. How are we going to run the meeting and why are we here. To answer those questions and to run the meeting you provide an outline for the group. For example, you say, “Okay, the purpose of this meeting is to lay out our plan for next year and here’s how we’re going to do it. First, it’s okay to have fun. What I mean is its okay to wise crack and have a good time today, but let’s not destruct the meeting away from why we’re here by doing so. Second, it’s not okay to nudge”. Participants will look at you and say, “What?” You say, “It means it’s not okay for you to give an elbow in the side of the guy next to you when I bring up a subject and turn to him and say, “I think he’s talking about you” [laughter]. In other words, lighten up, go easy on each other, we’re here to plan not to zing each other.

Then you say, “Okay. Third, no sacred cows. In India cows are considered sacred. They can wander right through anyone’s yard or even their home. The local religion says that a person shouldn’t bother them because they are sacred. Even if they trample your food supply. Sometimes in companies there are things that are sacred cows. Taboo ideas or subjects or ways of doing things that must be left alone or it seems that way. For example, someone might say, “Account service always handle that, so let’s not talk about changing it”. That’s a sacred cow. Maybe account service shouldn’t be handling whatever it is.

Maybe the matter should be handled by some other department. If you think, “If we do this then it’s going to hurt Edna’s feelings and Bob’s going to get Ben out of shape too and I might not look as good to the boss”. That kind of thinking will lead to a plan that’s no more than a protection plan to keep things as they are. It’s protecting the status-quo, insuring no change, no progress of any kind. Instead of a protection plan, create a strategic plan. A plan to develop strategies to take your organization where it ought to be. To help it become what’s it capable of becoming. Get the sacred cows out of the way.

Say, “Folks, just because we talk about changing something today, just because we talk about discarding a particular function or adopting it, doesn’t mean we’re going to do it. But if we don’t talk about it we’ll never know for sure whether it’s a good idea”. Another thing to do to set up an effective retreat is assign roles to people. Identify the person who will serve as the facilitator and the person who will serve as the meeting’s record keeper. As each question or problem exposed, have that written on the flip chart and have the sheet of paper taped up in the room so the group can see it and think about it.

Next, talk about why your organization is in business. This begins the formal agenda. In other words, decide what you’re there for. If the group has trouble answering why you’re in business, you probably have a lot of discussion ahead of you. Most organizations haven’t given a great deal of thought to why they really exist. They’ve just started doing what they do and that’s why most organizations don’t live very long. On average, a great number of businesses go under each year. It’s necessary to identify the organization’s mission. Why you exist? What’s the purpose of the company? Is its purpose just to make money? If that’s the case, those working there will have a very unsatisfying experience. But if you recognize that the purpose is to do something valuable for someone else and by doing it to earn a profit, then people can get excited about that. Talk about what it is, from there go on to moving in the specifics. Talk about the targeted markets that the group wants to go after.

How you can go after those markets. Then discuss the plans for reaching that market place. As each page on the flip chart is completed, tear it off, take a couple of pieces of masking tape, and put it up on the wall. Number the pages on the bottom so you know the sequence in which you discuss them. In this way you can visually review the whole meeting just by looking at the flip chart pages on the wall and you can say, “These are the rules we’re operating by, maybe that’s page one, we’re doing it pretty well. But look up there at page number one, it said the rules that we’re going by, rule number three says everyone should participate, I don’t think we’re all playing by that.

Let’s stick to the rules we agreed to”. Or you can say, “Look over here at the other page which has our company’s mission. Now these shows why we exist and I’m thinking if we go after the market we’ve been talking about for the past few minutes, it may take us away from our original direction and we’re not going to be on target with our mission statement”. That’s the kind of thinking you want. You want people to be aware of all of the elements of discussion so they can see all these various things that they’ve decided on, on the flip chart pages on the wall. And in looking at them, they can put their current discussion more on track with the ultimate purpose.

Finally, at the end of the meeting take all those pages down and have somebody transcribe them and give a copy to everyone who was present. Assign responsibility for follow through on some of the “to do’s” or some of the goals that were identified in the meeting. The nice thing is by having the pages numbered, you can transcribe them in order and people can recall the discussion as it progress from one issue to the next all day. An annual planning retreat that’s run properly can be very stimulating. It can also be exceptionally motivating because everyone in the room starts to feel like an owner of the organization.

Everyone’s saying, “They consider my ideas worthwhile. This is great. They care about what I have to say and I’m helping determine what kind of organization we become”. The last type of planning meeting I’d like to talk about, is the project planning meeting. Let’s say you are in charge of figuring out how to hold the annual fund raising drive for your local civic centre or social club. When you call a group together and lay out the plans for accomplishing that fund raising, you have a project planning meeting. The purpose of a project planning meeting is multi-faceted.

First, you have to establish the timeframe for the entire project. Next, you have to identify the actions needed to accomplish it. Then you have to put those in priority. Finally, you have to assign responsibilities to various people. There are several keys to effective project planning. But first you have to have a structure to go by. The structure of the planning process, as I see it, has ten steps and here there are. First, determine the needs. In our fund raising example the need is to hold an event to raise money. Second, set priorities. What’s more important, the dance, the picnic or whatever? Or the need to raise money?

Is it more important that everyone have a good time? Or more important that money is taking in? Set your priorities. Third, establish goals. Ask how much money do we want to raise and by when? Fourth, choose activities or actions to be taken. For example, you might say, “We have to find that the ballroom we want is available and we definitely to hire a band if we’re going to have a dance”. Those are some of the activities or actions that will need to be taken. Fifth, schedule and budget. Ask when should we hold our charity ball? Do we have enough time to get everything done by then?

How much can we afford to spend? Determine your schedule and your budget and make sure they are compatible. Sixth, identify obstacles that might stand in the way. What if the ballroom you want is already booked or if it’s too expensive? Those are possible obstacles you need to identify now. Seventh, identify strategies to handle each obstacle. You might say, “Let’s check out the American Legion Hall in case we can’t get the ballroom we want”. Eight, get started. Do it now. “Helen you call the hotel people today and find out about the ballroom, I’ll check out the American Legion”. Ninth, watch yourself and improve. Monitor the results as you go so you can improve where needed. Suppose you find the ballroom and the band didn’t cost as much as you’re budgeted for. That’s good news! If you’re monitoring the situation, you’ll know that early enough to improve things. Then you could say, “Maybe we can spend a little bit more money on the promotional materials now and draw in more people”. Tenth, evaluate the effectiveness of the plan after the project is complete. Look at the results and ask, “What could we’ve done better and how?” That’s my ten step planning process. First, determine the needs.

Second, set priorities. Third, establish goals. Fourth, choose activities or actions to be taken. Fifth, schedule and budget. Sixth, identify the obstacles that may stand in your way. Seventh, identify strategies to handle each obstacle. Eight, get started, do it now. Ninth, watch yourself and monitor the results. Tenth, evaluate the effectiveness of the plan after the project is completed. It’s a way you can easily lay out a plan to accomplish any project effectively. Use it as your guideline. Keep a written copy of it handy and let it guide your thinking as you go through the planning for any project.

The next time you’re going to run a planning meeting, write those down for yourself before you begin. I think you’ll find that it will take you a long way toward planning for results and another step closer toward making every meeting a meeting with success.

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For more information contact Jim Cathcart or Cathcart Institute, Inc. at http://Cathcart.com