Meet­ings have always been an inte­gral part of every effort to cre­ate some­thing last­ing. If you have set up a project because you wish to make some­thing beau­ti­ful in your respec­tive busi­ness you’ll need to com­mu­ni­cate with other peo­ple. Projects in them­selves are team efforts and teams need direc­tion if they are to reach the goals they set out to do. Dur­ing meet­ings you will be able to wit­ness the var­i­ous forces with which peo­ple try to influ­ence each other. That is because even though we make it seem like we’re all play­ing for the same team there are always dif­fer­ent things at stake hav­ing noth­ing to do with reach­ing a com­mon goal.

“It’s meet­ings that give us the view of a polit­i­cal play­ground where par­tic­i­pants show the hands they’ve been dealt.”

Con­cern­ing Politics

I’ve heard many times over that peo­ple hate the polit­i­cal forces at work, but that’s only because they’re not good enough to com­pete at the level where polit­i­cal skills are nec­es­sary and become fun because they’ve mas­tered the skill. True enough, pol­i­tics in the work area are known to have cer­tain neg­a­tive effects on soft­ware projects, but that’s deny­ing the fact that pol­i­tics can be used to a ben­e­fi­cial advan­tage. If you really want to kill the effects of pol­i­tics, just be hon­est your­self. Pol­i­tics will never be able to com­pete with moral authority.

Estab­lish­ing the Com­mon Ground

So much about pol­i­tics in com­bi­na­tion with meet­ings. Let’s deal with meet­ings alone. Giv­ing a project its focus is accom­plished dur­ing meet­ings and estab­lish­ing a com­mon ground. The most impor­tant mis­take being made with respect to meet­ings is that impor­tant stake­hold­ers are kept out of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion loop. To use another metaphor. If we are going on a trip I might just want to be there when it’s decided where we’re head­ing. At least I want to know our des­ti­na­tion, so I don’t end up with my ski’s on the planes of the African savan­nah. A lot of times soft­ware projects over­run their dead­line when the nec­es­sary agree­ment isn’t reached due to a lack of focus. Focussing a project team can eas­ily be com­pared with pass­ing the stick between two run­ners in relay rac­ing. What we see dur­ing soft­ware projects how­ever, is that one of the run­ners is run­ning in the wrong lane, the front run­ner isn’t run­ning at all or didn’t even bother to show up.

Two Things To Do When In a Meeting

Another thing is the energy level dur­ing meet­ings. Peo­ple will find them­selves unable to resolve issues, reach agree­ment and take action because half the time par­tic­i­pants pass out because of slow cir­cu­la­tion. Some­times even a defib­ril­la­tor is nec­es­sary to revive some­body unfor­tu­nate enough to have to attend the meet­ing. That’s just not the way to do things but we tend to get stuck dur­ing meet­ings. I don’t know about you but I get bored eas­ily and a lot of meet­ings I’m in just don’t seem to help. So what we need to do to get some­thing out of every meet­ing is the fol­low­ing two things:

• Pri­or­i­tize sub­jects accord­ing to milestones
• Bring­ing sub­jects from thought to action

Pri­or­i­tize Sub­jects Accord­ing to Milestones

Not every sub­jects is evenly impor­tant at dif­fer­ent times in a project’s life cycle so don’t treat them the same or you’ll find your­self dis­cussing some triv­ial mat­ter while the roof is about to col­lapse. Spend energy where it’s needed the most and mile­stones help you to pri­or­i­tize immensely. Always ask your­self the fol­low­ing question:

“What needs to be done to reach every mile­stone subsequently?”

Focus 80% of all your time and effort towards it’s attain­ment. If you do that you will achieve the ben­e­fi­cial effects of the lin­ear approach I dis­cussed ear­lier and you can cel­e­brate small vic­to­ries with each and every mile­stone suc­cess­fully dealt with.

Bring­ing Sub­jects From Thought to Action

The last item deals with bring­ing sub­jects from thought to action. There’s an IMMENSE gap between what peo­ple THINK or SAY and what they actu­ally DO.

“You don’t judge a char­ac­ter by its words but by its actions.”

I couldn’t care less about a meeting’s min­utes, I hardly ever read them and think the time spend on mak­ing them can be put to use much more effi­ciently. Besides that I care much more if every sin­gle per­son knows what he or she needs to do and per­forms the job. So much time and effort is spend in talk­ing and putting down what every­body is talk­ing about that the actual doing of things are caught in dire straits while its action we need the most dur­ing projects. Dur­ing lunch breaks I’ve heard so many things every­body should do it made me want to throw up at times. But every­body is so busy appar­ently they don’t have the time to do some­thing about it. They can bitch about it for months and months though. I’m all for niceties and how they can broaden ones per­spec­tive but when in deci­sion mode a lit­tle black and white can be refresh­en­ing. Only so much time can be spend on dis­cussing prob­lems. There have to come a time when thoughts have to be trans­formed into actions.

Related posts:

1. Soft­ware Project Trait #4: Milestones
2. Soft­ware Project Trait #2: Generic Power
3. Soft­ware Project Trait #5: Scope
4. Soft­ware Project Trait #3: Roles
5. Soft­ware Project Trait #1: Hall Stand