Making Sure Your Meeting is Worth It
“This could have been an email”
One of the most effective skills you can have as a product leader is to ensure that your meetings, and especially your 1:1’s are effective and productive. Be it synchronous or asynchronous, you are asking someone to give up time, so it’s vital that it was worth it. No one want to be know as the person very one goes “oh god” to when they see a calendar invite from.
Here are some tips to not make you be *that* person:
Preparation is everything!
Review previous meeting notes regularly and make sure you’re following up on any action items as early as possible.
Completing an action item on the due date counts but it’s better when there’s some lead time.
Prepare specific agenda items.
No agenda? No meeting. Seriously, this is law.
Gather relevant data/metrics ahead of time.
No one likes digging through dashboards during the meeting, and the UI is always the slowest at that time.
List key decisions needed to send in the invite so that you’re both on the same page.
There should be no surprises in a meeting.
Document, document, document. This is not the Agile Manifesto, if there are no artifacts the meeting never happened.
Keep a running document of discussions, whether for each meeting or a running list, and make sure everyone involved has access to that document on a share folder so they can track changes in the product/program/project
Track action items and owners and make sure that who ever is the owner of that action item
Note key decisions and the rationale behind them.
You don’t want to be a year down the road looking at the artifact and thinking, “Okay but why?”
Share *relevant* updates with team.
It’s fine to tag people or add them to a document but in a world where inboxes are flooded and Slack can be noisy, if you want someone to see something, it’s critical that you make sure it’s in front of them.
Follow-up. Don’t depend on someone’s memory, I barely remember my children’s birthdays, you think I remember what I discussed in this meeting?
Send a summary of key points discussed during the meeting.
Track action items to completion, a Kansan board is especially useful for this. Smartsheet/Notion/Quip all have this feature built in and you can tag who the ACCEPTED owner on that action item.
Schedule any needed follow-up meetings,
Don’t be a dragon and horde knowledge. Share out the relevant information with other stakeholders.
Timing & frequency matters.
Engineering Lead: Weekly
Design Lead: Weekly/Bi-weekly
Product Peer: Weekly
Sales Lead: Bi-weekly
Meeting hygiene is as important as your normal hygiene.
Start and end on time.
Minimize distractions, ideally it should just be the meeting window, whatever you’re using to take notes and nothing else. Set your Slack to Do Not Disturb
Take clear notes. Personally, I record every meeting I run since if someone wasn’t they’re they can catch up and sometimes it’s hard to discuss and take notes at the same time.
Set clear next steps
Maintain regular cadence
So to put a bow on this, do:
Come prepared with agenda
Listen actively
Focus on strategic items
Document decisions
Follow up on action items
Be present and engaged
And for all that is holy please don’t:
Cancel last minute. Once or twice is okay, but consistently is the action of a person that does not value others time.
Let status updates dominate. Seriously, do this asynchronous, ideally before the meeting happens in the associated artifact. We can all read, focus on what needs to be discussed.
Avoid difficult conversations. Uncomfortable and difficult conversations and the problems they deal with don’t magically go away. Nip them in the bud early.
Leave action items unclear. Follow the ROAM technique.
Rush through important topics, mind the time or take from less important topics. If needed, discuss asynchronously.
I created some template for various different 1:1’s (Product, Engineering, Sales, Desgn). They’re free and open for anyone to take and make their own. Hope this helps you be a success.
