Keep meetings centered on a clear output stated upfront. When discussion drifts, refocus the group on that target. This simple three-step framework prevents tangents and wasted time while ensuring meetings actually produce results.
Hi and welcome to the 15 Steps for Successful Meetings series. This is step number 7. Stay focused on the purpose and the output of your meeting. What does this mean? Why do you need to do it? Well, when you stay focused on the output of your meeting, you are more likely to have a successful meeting. Meetings that have a clear purpose, meetings that have a clearly defined output, are going to avoid some of the most common challenges and most common time-wasting issues that we find in meetings. Well, what are they? Well, we'll take a look by saying if you don't do this, if you don't stay focused on the purpose and the output, these are the things that happen. You go off on tangents. A conversation will carry on in a direction and then drift off and you go off in a totally different direction not related to the core purpose and output of your meeting. You also go down rabbit holes. This is where you go really down into the detail that might or probably isn't relevant to achieving the particular output. That you want. You also finish late. You can get 3 quarters of the way through the meeting and then realize that you're only a quarter of the way towards achieving what you want. And that means you end up finishing late or you don't get what you want to produce from that time in the meeting. Which is, of course, why you can get no output. And all of that leads to wasted time. If all these things happen in your meetings, you're going to waste time and have some other issues as well. So this is what happens if you don't have a purpose and output-focused meeting. So the question you may have now is, well, how do you do it? How do you stay focused on the output, particularly during the meeting where conversations have twists and turns? There's a simple way to do it, and here's how. I'd like you to imagine your meeting like this. The white space is your meeting. You have a group of people up here at the beginning of the meeting, and you have a target over here as the output. The purpose of the meeting is to produce this thing. And the people are going to get over to that end throughout the duration of the meeting. So step 1 is set the target. Tell people where you're taking them on this meeting. Tell them where they're aiming for and the thing that they're going to produce. Then the second step is have the conversation. And like this picture shows, conversations twist and turn. It's never a straight, direct line to get to the answer. And that's okay. Conversations and topics will move into different areas as long as the progress continues towards the outcome Output, then you're doing okay. Now here's the thing. When you notice that in this middle section here, the conversation really seems like it's going off track, you refocus people on the original output. Some of these twists and turns might be a normal, appropriate part of the discussion. Other times, it might be a deviation onto a different topic, moving towards a separate output, serving a completely different purpose. When you know what the true and original output is over here, you can refocus people's attention to get them back onto that, and that will help you stay on track. So that is why tip number 7 in this series is stay focused on the purpose and output, and you will have successful meetings.
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