If You Want More Effective Meetings, Use This Tool For Ending 17 Minutes Early

Here's a very simple way to cut 17 minutes from most meetings you sit in. Have a statement of achievement. What is that? Well, we did a survey recently and we asked people coming out of meetings, Was the meeting you were just in, did it accomplish its original objective? And we gave people 3 choices: yes, no, and I have no idea. Sadly, the most common answer wasn't yes, most common answer wasn't no, the most common answer was I have no idea. Why? Because they didn't have a clear objective for the meeting they were just in. How many times have you sat through a meeting where you're like, I, I don't really know what the point of this meeting is, or I don't know how I'm supposed to judge other than looking at the clock when this meeting is over. A statement of achievement is one sentence that basically says, as a result of this meeting, we will have achieved blank. I don't care what blank is, but blank has to be something. As a result of this meeting, we will have picked a price for the proposal we're submitting to the Johnson account. As a result of this meeting, we will have decided which of the 3 clinical safety protocols we're going to move forward with. As a result of this meeting, we will have decided who's going to be in charge of next week's employee lunch. Whatever. As long as you have a crystal clear objective for your meetings, you now have 2 important things. One, you have some purpose, which is great. But two, one of the reasons why meetings get fluffy and last too long is that we don't have a clear objective. So the only way we know that the meeting is over is when the bell rings, when the 60 minutes is up or whatever. If you have 20 minutes of content in a meeting but a 60-minute time block, how long does the meeting last? 60 minutes, right? If you have 37 minutes worth of content in a 60-minute time block, how long does the meeting last? 60 minutes. Why? Because we don't have a crystal clear objective that says, as soon as we accomplish this statement of achievement, the meeting is over. So with a statement of achievement that says, As a result of this meeting, we will have achieved picking a new price for the proposal for the Johnson account. Wonderful. You can say, once you have that, you can say to the rest of the group, listen folks, here's our objective, here's our statement of achievement for the meeting today. As soon as we accomplish this, meeting's over. That means everybody around the room now starts looking at each other going, yeah, let's not talk about last night's basketball game. Let's not talk about, you know, the episode of The Bachelor, who won or whatever, I don't even know if that's still on. But now let's set all of that aside and let's just get this thing done so we can all get outta here. What we find is when organizations implement a statement of achievement in all their meetings, meetings end on average 17 minutes early. Is that the end of the world? No, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you can take a 60-minute meeting down to 2 minutes. Probably not gonna happen unless it was a meeting that shouldn't have happened in the first place. But 17 minutes per meeting on average spread across the 20 meetings you sit in every week? Well, now all of a sudden we're talking about real time. And the only thing we need to do is one sentence that says, "As a result of this meeting, we will have achieved something."