Chris Fenning explains how to keep a meeting on track by checking progress toward your goal at set points like halfway and three-quarters through. Stop and ask if you've made the decisions you need, then adjust how you're running things to make sure you finish on time.
Chapters
How to facilitate a meeting, tip number 3: track the progress towards the goal or the outcome. When you have a meeting at work, there is a specific goal, purpose, or a desired outcome for that session. As the facilitator, it's your job to help achieve that goal. It doesn't matter if everybody has a great time in the meeting if it doesn't produce what you set out to in the first place. Now, if you don't track progress towards the goal, you may find that you run out of time at the end. You're so involved in the discussion, lots of good input, but haven't made as much progress as needed towards the end goal. If you run out of time, you're going to have to set up another meeting or fail to achieve the objective of the one that you're in. Now, how do you track— how do you track the time towards the progress, and how do you track your progress towards your goal? Well, know what you're trying to achieve in the meeting, and then at set points throughout the session— halfway through, 3 quarters of the way through— Do a little check with yourself and say, are we making progress towards where we need to be? At halfway through the meeting, are we halfway towards that desired goal? If you need to make 5 decisions, have 2 or 3 of them been made by that point? By checking the progress towards the goal as you move through the meeting, you won't be surprised when you get to the end, and you'll also be able to adapt your approach and change the way you facilitate the discussion to either— to speed up the progress if it's necessary. So if you want to facilitate a good meeting, make sure you're tracking the progress towards the desired goal or output.
