EntreLeadership - #358: 5 Steps for No Fail Meetings with Michael Hyatt

Episode Date: January 20, 2020

If you’re anything like the average team member in America today, you attend roughly 62 meetings every month. And if you’re an executive, that number is even higher. About half (yes, 50%) of your work week is spent in meetings! Even worse? Most of those meetings are a complete waste of time, says bestselling author Michael Hyatt. Tune in to hear Michael explain five ways to make the most of every meeting to not only save precious hours but also improve your culture and increase your team’s productivity and performance.   entreleadership.com/podcast No Fail Meetings by Michael Hyatt Michael Hyatt's website Full Focus Planner Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt Michael Hyatt’s Library of Meeting Agenda Templates Your Personal Guide to a Productive Work Week Review this episode for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, when's the last time you got super pumped, excited, and amped about a meeting? Like, have you ever said, man, I just can't wait for this meeting? Has that ever happened? Yeah, probably not. And that's because most people perceive most meetings as being ineffective, unuseful, unproductive, and in no way helpful. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entree Leadership podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams,

and their profits. I'm your host, Alex Judd, and although we may hate meetings, we do need them. And not only that, we're also responsible for them. Here at Entrague leadership, we believe that the success or failure of a meeting, the productivity of a meeting depends on one thing. Leadership. That means that meetings are one of your greatest responsibilities, but also one of your greatest opportunities. And today's guest is one of the world's leading authorities on productivity and organizational effectiveness. And so today's guest is Michael Hyatt, and he knows from experience just how horrible meetings can be the benefits of doing them right and just how high the stakes actually are.

I think like a lot of business owners, like a lot of executives, you know, I got to the place where I just hated meetings. It felt like that was my entire life. And in fact, when I became the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, I was in meetings almost every day, all day. which meant that the only time I had to get my work done was either after work or before work or on the weekends. And it just wasn't a sustainable life. And then I started realizing that a lot of these meetings are not that helpful.

And as it turns out, the average person in a corporation today in America spends 62 or 62 different meetings a month. That's over 15 a week. We're spending $37 billion on meetings in this country every year. And the average executive spends more than half their time in meetings. Oh my God. It makes you cringe. It does because you think, are they really that productive? And most people I talk to, most of my clients, they hate meetings. And so I thought, we've got to reinvent this because meetings have to happen. If you're going to coordinate work, if you're going to stay aligned as a team, you've got to have meetings. It's funny. I've kind of read a little bit and listened to a lot of how you come at this subject. And just as my own little experiment, I walked around our office and talked to a bunch of my friends and the people that I spend time with and just reached out to them. and I asked him, what is the one word or phrase that first comes to mind whenever you hear the word meeting? And I told him, it has to be the knee-jerk reaction.

And here's what they gave me. Someone said, is it worth my time? Someone said, could it be an email? Three people said boring. Some people said, what's it about? One person said, ugh. Someone said waste, disappointed time, time, time. And then there was one innocent soul that it's like, this is just, and this guy's personality, too.

He's just so positive. And I asked him that question and you said, collaboration. And I was like, God bless you. You are the untainted person. But it's amazing how we all seem to have this negative connotation in our mind whenever we hear that word. Why do you perceive that that's the case? I think because most meetings are a waste of time by virtue of the fact that they're not run well. They're not planned.

And honestly, they sometimes substitute for things that could be done in a completely other way. For example, this often happens in corporations where somebody doesn't really want to make a decision. They've got some ambiguity about some topic that they need clarity on. And so instead of actually doing the hard work of thinking for themselves or making the decision, they schedule a meeting. So it's kind of a fancy way to procrastinate. Oh, my God. Organizationally. And it also is a fancy way to kind of share the blame or the responsibility.

So instead of me having to come up with a solution, I'm going to get a bunch of people in a room and I'll have a group decide and then it won't be my responsibility. But in doing so, you're slowing things down so much. That's why I think meetings, if you're not careful, can kind of create this undergrowth in your culture that absolutely slows everything down. They don't have to be that way, but they can be that way if you're not careful. And that was something that you said in your book that really stood out to me is that a lot of times we have this underlying assumption that may actually be a lie that meetings are work. And in reality, it seems like a lot of meetings aren't work at all.

So I guess how should we look at what warrants a meeting? meeting. What defines what is worth having a meeting about? Yeah. So this kind of goes to the first point in my book, no fail meetings. And that is you've got to decide. I think you've got to first determine, do we need a meeting? So one of the worst possible uses of a meeting is to disseminate information. You know, it's the slow way. It's the painful way. And if you ask employees, it's the number one thing that they hate in a meeting is a status update meeting. That's like the death meeting. Nobody wants to go to those status update meetings. Because you just start asking yourself the question, is there a better way to disseminate this information?

Why do we have to get everybody in a room, all the small talk, all the time that's expended, all the payroll that's expended on something like that, just to inform them of something that we could do in a much better way. We could do it, you know, through an email or if you use Slack in your organization, you know, some way, just internal communication to update people. So that's a bad reason to have a meeting. So that's the negative side of things. What are the topics or what are that kind of the arenas that do warrant getting a group of people together and sitting down. Yeah, I think whatever you're trying to plan work, you know, and you're trying to brainstorm a topic and you realize that you don't have all the resources or have a limited perspective,

you know, as a manager or a leader, and you want to involve people that bring different perspectives so that you've got a much richer conversation and a better full-orbed perspective on that topic. Also, when you want to make a decision, you know, making a decision, that's a key thing that these are good for, that meetings are good for. But they need to lead to that. They need to lead to either better thinking or they need to lead to better decisions, but it doesn't just need to be dissemination of information. And I think that kind of hits on this idea that it's like they should be driving towards something. Totally. It's got to be an outcome. Yes. Okay. So explain what is the difference between a well-run meeting that has an outcome and one that doesn't?

Okay. It all starts. Well, I should say, I was going to say it all starts with the right agenda. That's the first thing. But you've also got to have the right people in the room. So it's got to be the right people in the room, and it can't be too many people. If you have too many people in the room, and we don't want to leave anybody out, but if you have too many people in the room, that also slows down the conversation. And you know there are too many people in the room when you've got people that are not commenting, they're not engaged. You know, maybe the conversation is between three or four people that meeting probably should have been with those three or four people, right? But you've got to have an agenda, and there's a specific format that I advocate for an agenda

in the book, no fail meetings. And so I think that's where it starts. But the last part of that is you've got to be really focused on what the outcomes. What are the decisions that we made? What's the follow-up we expect? And we're going to hold people accountable to those follow-up actions so that we don't have to keep having the same meeting over and over again. So it sounds like a lot of whether a meeting is a failure or a success depends on the actions you take well before the meeting actually begins. Totally. That really falls on the leader.

It's up to him to first of all decide who's going to be in the meeting, what the overall purpose of the meeting is going to be. going to be. There's a novel idea, you know, just so that people walk in knowing why we're here. And then creates the agenda because you need to know when the meeting is over. So like I serve on the board of an academic institution. And one of the things I discovered about academics that's different than business owners and the people that listen to this podcast is they just love to talk. They love to hear themselves talk. The meetings can go on forever and ever. If you plan a three-hour meeting, you will fill it up. In fact, it would probably go four hours. But in business, we can't afford that. You know, that's not the, we don't have that luxury. We got to get to the

point, finish the meeting, get on to the next thing. So being outcome focused and knowing the purpose of the meeting is critical. So how do you get into a spot? Because it takes more time on the front end, but you're going to reap the rewards of the preparation. So how do you get into a spot where you discipline yourself as the business owner or as the business leader to really take that time on the front end and actually prepare? Well, let's talk about recurring meetings. So these are meetings that are like standing meetings that happen over and over again. So it might be a one on one meeting with an assistant or somebody on your team. It may be a team meeting that you have like a team huddle once a week.

First of all, I always have somebody taking minutes. If I'm going to be in 15 meetings a week or even 10 meetings a week, I'm going to forget. I'm going to sleep since the last time I was in that meeting. So I want a record of what we discussed. Now I don't want detail, you know, Alex said this and then Michael said that. No, no, just mostly the decisions that we made, you know, just a summary of that. But I also want to summarize and put it the time. top of the minutes, the follow-up items that we outlined. So this is critical. We want to have the

follow-up items and we want to have an owner for each of those follow-up items. And we want to begin the meeting by reviewing what we said we were going to do last time. What were the outstanding items? And you asked the question about preparation. So one of the things to be a good meeting participant or a good meeting leader is to review those before you come to the meeting. So you don't show up. And then you're embarrassed. You're like, I didn't get to that. Or I forgot I was supposed to do that. But what you really want to do is show up and say, yep, I got that done because I agreed to it beforehand. I had a date on it when I was going to get it done. And that's my responsibility before I show up at the next meeting. So I end the meeting and I start to meeting

with those two things. But I think you hit on that idea already that it's because you are expecting to have to give that update in the next meeting that you actually get to work. And so that goes in line with what you already kind of alluded to with establishing an agenda for the meeting. So I'd love for you to dive into, this doesn't have to be as complicated as some people make it, I think. What makes for an effective agenda for a meeting? Yeah, I would say this. I mean, first of all, start with the basic information, you know, who the participants are and all that, and then get to the purpose of the meetings.

So I would literally state the purpose and the desired results. Like, we're here to do this. We're here to make a decision on Sarah's marketing proposal. Okay, so that, though, decision on Sarah's marketing proposal, that is remarkably specific. Super specific. And is that important? It is important. You know, like one of the meetings that we had yesterday and the purpose was we're here to discuss our October financial results and find out what gap we have between now and the end of the year and then brainstorm ways to fill it. So sounds kind of long, but that's a specific outcome. That, by the way, was the entire result that we wanted for the meeting. Make sense? Yes, it does. And that's the type of meeting that I would walk into almost expecting something. positive to happen. If I'm a participant, when I read that purpose on an invite or when someone tells me, hey, this is what we're going to do, I show up into that almost expecting that we're going to do big things in that meeting, which that changes the tone of the room.

Change the tone of meeting. Then people look forward to the meeting they anticipated. Like, I love my executive team meetings because it's always something like that. But then you get into the nitty gritty of what I call the meeting program. And I use an acronym for this, A-E-I-O, no you, but the vowels. Okay. So first thing you want to do is you want to celebrate achievements. That's what the A stands for. So by that, we're going to review what we said we're going to do at the last meeting. We're going to celebrate the wins where people accomplish something. And that's really important for team leaders, because in most organizations, this is something that I think leaders fall into is they notice what's missing or where things are broken. And if they're not

careful, they sort of cast a negative tone over the meeting at the very beginning because they're talking about all the problems. You've got to celebrate where you're winning. Because that gives you a sense of confidence, a sense of momentum, and the team feels like, okay, we can take on big things because we're winning. So, first of all, anticipate. You talk about starting with achievements. We do mastermind calls here with business owners around the country, and we get into these masterminds. And I was here playing the coaching role for about a year, and we would always start the calls off with accountability, right? And we'd start with accountability. And then we wonder, we were like, man, the energy of the call just doesn't seem like where we want it to be. And so we made one minute shift.

we said, okay, we're going to start every call from now on with asking the question, what is one highlight or win from the past 30 days? And we just do it round robin real quick, kind of like what you're talking about with achievements, and it changes the tone of the entire call. Totally does. And so is that the purpose of that first achievement vow? Is it just to set the tone of the meeting and make people feel good about where they are? Totally, because everybody wants to plan a winning team.

And if we're not careful, we forget that we're winning. Because, you know, we notice the gap. We see where we're losing. and that becomes sort of the preeminent thing, but we want to notice where we're winning, and we want other people to notice where they're winning. And subtly, that also creates accountability, right? But without that dreaded A word of accountability,

because I do think that sometimes, you know, puts people off. So that's the A. So then the E is we want to calibrate expectations. So that is, what's the purpose of the meeting? And that's what the meeting leader does at the very beginning. So after we've done achievements, here's why we're here today. Here's the results that we anticipate.

Then we want to go from there to, the issues, and that's what the I stands for. So what are the issues that we want to discuss? And that's where I literally lay them out in the agenda. And I try to assign a time that I think it's going to take to discuss that or to get resolution on that item so that I can kind of pace the meeting because I am very meticulous about ending meetings on time. Yeah. Start and end on time. Nobody ever complained about a meeting that ended early. Okay, so that hits home on the idea. If you do accomplish the objective before the time is done, what do you do? Do you? Leave.

You're getting a digital standing ovation from everyone right now. That's a side, because it seems like sometimes it's like, well, we've got 20 minutes left. Let's just twiddle our thumbs and continue to talk about this thing that we could have made a decision on in two minutes. Well, Parkinson's Law says that work expands to the time allotted for it. Okay, say that one more time. Work expands to the time allotted for it. So it may really only require 37 minutes worth of work, but if you've got an hour allotted for it, you will. will fill the time. Hyatt's corollary is that work contracts to the time allotted for it. That's why

instead of just defaulting to an hour-long meeting or a 30-minute meeting, shorten it, because that constraint will actually force people to get to the point faster. So, for example, if you're saying at the beginning of the meeting when you're calibrating expectations, you're saying, here's our purpose, we've got 30 minutes today to discuss this, so we don't have time for horsing around. Let's get to it. So that keeps those meetings moving. I would much rather people, leave feeling like, wow, I could have gone for another hour rather than that meeting lasts an hour longer than it should have, right? Yes.

And I think the two things that you just hit on between expectations and issues, there's something powerful there. One of our personalities, Chris Hogan, he uses the line that an unspoken expectation is just a thought. But what you just said is, hey, we have a lot of work to do. We don't have much time to do it. So let's focus right now. I've been in meetings before where it seems like that expectation wasn't set.

And so as a result, we spend five minutes discussing the thing, five minutes joking around, five minutes inside conversation, five minutes more discussing the thing. It's like sometimes... Takes forever. Yes. But it seems like sometimes the difference maker is just setting the expectation that we're going to focus on the issues. That's right. So once you get past the issues, once you get that on the agenda, then the question is the outcomes. You know, then you're going to record the decisions that you make and the follow-up items.

And every one of those, and hopefully it's a limited number. It's, you know, three to five or so. Everyone is going to have an owner. everyone isn't going to have a due date. I never want to have multiple owners on one of those items because then you don't know who to blame if it doesn't get done. But one owner and a due date and preferably by the time the next, you know, meeting date, doesn't not always that case, but you want to have a firm due date there.

And I always allow time in the agenda the last five minutes for what I call the meeting facilitator, which is different than the leader. And we can break that apart a minute if you want to. But where the facilitator reviews the action items that are due, you know, who's responsible so that we're all clear. We're going to leave with clarity about who's responsible for what and when those items are due. That's the last part of the meeting. So don't push the meeting right up to the clock and then leave without clarity about who's doing what. Yeah. And I am guilty of this. I and I'm sure our listeners can connect with this as well where you're like literally walking out the door of the meeting.

You're saying, oh yeah, yeah, by the way, can you do that and I'll plan to do this and we'll see you? And it's like there is no formality to the action. And then we're all surprised. whenever it actually doesn't get done. Or you don't have the clarity around who's responsible. So you get to the next meeting and it's like, well, I thought Alex was doing that. And Alex is like, oh, I thought Michael was doing that. Who was responsible? You know, who's on first?

So I think you've got to get that clarity walking out of it. And this is just a time to make sure that you're aligned in terms of what actions required from that meeting. If you do that on a regular basis, if you start with the actions and end with the actions, what happens is you begin to make consistent incremental progress on whatever it is your department's responsible for. or your business is responsible for. It seems like the difference maker a lot of times between a meeting that is effective in terms of multiplying people's time versus taking people's time and wasting it.

The difference maker is leadership. It seems like. And so you've talked about a bunch of things that go into this agenda. What is the role of the leader in the meeting, both in preparation and during the actual meeting? Yeah, I think it's important for the leader, first of all, to put. pre-think that agenda and come up with the agenda because sometimes maybe 25, 30% of the time, you go, you know what, I don't really need a meeting on this. I just need to get with, or maybe I need a meeting, but I need to meet with Joe and I don't need to pull together, you know, 15 people or 10 people

or whatever. Or maybe I just need to schedule a one-hour block and do my own thinking on this. Instead of, you know, outsourcing my thinking to the brain trust, maybe this is my job. Maybe I just need to think it up. And maybe I will take this draft to a few people and run it by them. but I need to do the thinking myself. So the leader's job is to do that. You know, is the meeting necessary? Who needs to be there to discuss it? Come up with the agenda.

Then in the meeting, what the leader does is lead a conversation around that topic. This was a hard thing for me to learn as a leader where I felt like I had to have all the answers. And really the role of the leader is to have the questions. You know, if you only get the best thinking of everybody else and if it really requires other thinking, then you need to come prepared with questions and some sort of, some issues that you need to get resolved and facilitate a lively discussion, including one where people have the freedom to debate and where there's the freedom to dissent, you know, from what they think may be your opinion. And I think part of the leader's role is to create an environment

that's safe for dissent so people can push back so they can speak their mind freely. So you get the best thinking on the table without people feeling like there's going to be a repercussion for disagreeing with the status quo. Hey, I want you to imagine something real quick. I want you to imagine that you as a business owner are wrapping up your week on a Thursday. Now, I didn't misspeak. I meant Thursday. Think of those four Fridays every single month where you could actually not just work in the business, but work on the business. You could spend time investing in yourself, investing in leaders, doing things that are different and new to move the business forward. Now, I know you're waiting for a catch. How could I take Fridays off to work on the business? But it is possible. We've seen

business owners do this. And our friends at Belay have a guide to help you maximize your productivity Monday through Thursday so that you can actually find that time on Friday. They're going to give you advice for delegating effectively and empowering your team. And even if you as a leader take one thing away that can make you more productive, well, then it's worth the download. So text Belay to 3196 to get this free guide. Again, that's Belay spelled B-E-L-A-Y to 3-9-9-6 to 3196 to get access to their productivity guide and start working on the business on Fridays. So I had a business owner in one of my mastermind calls the other day that she got all excited the month before about starting a weekly leadership team meeting with her and six of her leaders.

And she got all excited about it and the group was really supportive of her. And then she came back this next month and she said, hey, we had the meeting. So that was a win. but she said it felt like I was talking at them and not talking with them. Yeah. And she said it felt more like it was a presentation. And I told them, I want you to engage and I want you to be part of this conversation, but they weren't doing it.

And I think a lot of people have that experience. And maybe it's just because they are the business owner. They are the CEO and people are intimidated. So how do you go about creating that environment where conversation can actually happen? Actually prepare questions. Like show up with prepared questions for each of those issues. in the program. So you know what questions you're going to ask and they're going to be open-ended questions. They're not going to be rhetorical. They're not going to be yes, no questions, but they're

going to be open-ended where you're genuinely curious, you know, where you're asking a question that you're asking for their expertise because they're coming with subject matter expertise that you don't have ostensibly. You know, as a business owner, you may have a lot of experience, but you're really counting on those frontline people, those people that are running different areas your business to give you honest feedback. So ask those questions, suspend disbelief, And by that, I mean, don't think you know the answers. Kind of come with beginner's mind yourself. So like, I'm going to look at this fresh.

I'm going to create an environment that's safe for dissent. So I would just literally state that at the beginning until you have a culture of this. But say, look, I want you guys to push back. You may think you know what I think, but push back on it. If you disagree with it, I'm giving you permission to push back on it. And then get really comfortable with awkward silence. That's a big one, though. It's a big one.

I've seen myself ask a question, and then it's like, oh, gosh, no one's answering. Okay, I'll answer my question. I'll do it. So you literally just sit there? Just sit there. Just look at them. Sometimes I'll call on people. And I will definitely call on people that are too quiet in the meeting.

So sometimes people are just reluctant to share, or maybe they're a little bit passive or less assertive than their teammates who want to jump in there. And like in my team, we've got people interrupting each other and all this stuff all the time. And so, which, by the way, can become a bad meeting behavior. just because people are fully engaged and excited about talking about the topic. But we have a new person on our team, brand new to our team, who's a little bit more reticent. He's not fully acclimated yet. And so sometimes I'll just call on him and I'll say, you know, Jared, what do you think? And so that forces him to have to participate.

And I honestly want to know what he has to think. And in your experience, when you do call on him, is it that he legitimately didn't have a thought? Or is it that he just wasn't voicing that thought? He just wasn't voicing it. And that's usually the case. Sometimes the most quiet people are the most thoughtful people. And so one of the things I learned when I was the CEO, Thomas Nelson, my predecessor, who is Sam Moore, who had been the CEO for 50 years, he would always speak last in any meeting.

And he told me, when he was mentoring me, he said, the reason I speak last is he said, I don't kind of want to cause everybody to see where the wind's blowing because then everybody jumps on and follows my lead. But if I don't state that at the outcome, like if I'm trying to get a a decision made. And I'm not clear about that, then everybody's going to give their opinion, then I could weigh in at the end. He called it holding your counsel. And that's something I try to do too. I try to hold my counsel to the end because I want the best thinking of the group before I weigh in. If I don't need that, there's no sense in having a meeting. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

If you just want to give a presentation, then give a presentation, but don't call it a meeting. Don't do the disservice of calling in a meeting. It's disrespectful to people. And that becomes like Jim Collins modeling good to great, you know, the genius with a thousand helpers. You don't want that model. Well, that's not scalable at all. Totally not scalable. I know one of the things you talk about in the book is that the things that can derail a meeting are what you call annoying meeting behaviors, AMBs. And so the list that you listed was taking phone calls, which jerk move, taking a phone call in the middle of a meeting, jerk move.

Checking email, side conversations, talking too much, interruptions, not coming prepared, chasing rabbits, not speaking up. I read some of these and I'm like, oh, yeah, I hate when people do that. And then I read some of them like, oh, my gosh, I've totally done that. That's totally me. So how do you create the atmosphere as a leader where that stuff doesn't happen? Well, first of all, you've got to be aware of these annoying meeting behaviors so that you can call them out in real time when they're happening. You know, I try to be gentle and kind about it. But, for example, you can set the expectation in that part of the agenda where you're setting expectations of, look, this is not a time for you to be working on your laptop or doing other work in the meeting because we've all had that experience.

I can remember sitting in a board meeting years ago where at the time Thomas Nelson was owned by a private equity company. And so the principals would come in. We'd have this board meeting. You know, they would just fly in from out of town. We'd sit in this board meeting. And this was back of the day of Blackberries before you were born probably. But, you know, it's sort of like the precursor to the smartphones. Okay.

For the record, I know what Blackberries are. For the record. So we'd sit in the meeting and these guys would have their heads in their phones answering email. And I can distinctly remember one presentation that we were making about the results. that we'd had this last month. And one of the principles asked us, one of my board members asked us a question that we had literally just spent 10 minutes answering.

Oh, it drives me crazy. I kind of looked at my colleagues and it was like, really? So I, you know, went right back into an explanation of what we'd already covered. But that's what slows meetings down is when people are giving you half at their available bandwidth,

they're not fully there. You know, their body's present, but their mind's somewhere else. So I just set that expectation at the front end. There was a time that I banned laptops and banned smartphones. And I don't do that today, but I really want to make sure, you know, if you're using your smartphone, if you're using your iPad, make sure you're referencing something or you're taking notes, but you're engaged in the meeting and not doing other work. Another thing that's huge is side conversations. So I learned this

tip from Lucy Swindoll called the One Conversation Rule, which, by the way, works phenomenally at home, too. So we have this rule at home where when I have I have five daughters, when their families come over, we have one conversation, no side conversations. And it's fascinating. You know, everybody stays focused. Everybody feels respected. Everybody gets a chance to participate. Y'all did this with the grandkids, too? Do they apply themselves to this rule?

They totally do. Holy cow. No, obviously when they're young and, you know, it's a little bit harder. But as they get older, absolutely. And we love this. We cherish this time. But we do in our company, too. We do not tolerate side conversations because it's a distraction.

And again, it siphons off available bandwidth from the other people that are in the room. And you feel like you're having to talk over it. It feels like somebody's hijacking the meeting. You're not sure whether you're supposed to wait for them to finish or if you're going to call them out in public. So set the expectation at the beginning. Please don't have any side conversations. Okay. So if you set that expectation and maybe it's not even malicious intent, it just side conversations start or chasing.

rabbit, stuff like that. As a leader, what is your responsibility in that moment when someone starts having a side conversation? I will usually stop the meeting and stare at them. Again, awkward silence. Awkward silence. Hope they get it. And if they don't, and this happened to me just last week in a meeting that I was leading, where I had to say, Don, can we have your attention back in the meeting? Well, then he knew because I'd set the expectation. He knew exactly what he was doing. He came up and apologized to me afterward. So it's not like some legalistic, oppressive thing, but it's just for the sake of everybody. Sometimes you can be so concerned about offending one person that you end up wasting a ton of people's time. What we have to be as stewards

of everybody's time, not just that one person. And I think that goes to kind of a leadership principle of you're taking on ownership of the meeting being an environment where collaboration can happen, but you're also creating a culture in which people show up prepared and being. stewards of each other's time in that meeting. Because the time, when you take everybody's time and translate it into real payroll dollars, meetings are expensive. And you've got to get the value out of them. You've got to squeeze the juice out of them.

Can I share one more? Yeah. Yeah. So this is annoying too. So when the meeting gets derailed, it gets off topic. Now, when I was in school, I was a master at derailing the teacher from the topic at hand. You know, I think a lot of precocious, more extroverted kids can do that. But it's not helpful in a meeting context.

And sometimes topics come up in a meeting, and it's your role as a leader to say, hey, that's a great topic. I want to give ample time to discuss that at some point. But we're going to table that for now and get back to the agenda because that will derail your agenda and it sounds urgent and somebody had an idea. That doesn't mean it has to be discussed now. So whether you call it a parking lot, you know, or, you know, just some place to keep your ideas for later, table those and you can come back to them at the end of the meeting if you have time

or set up another meeting, but don't let it derail the objective at hand. When you're in a meeting with people, is the expectation and the culture that you've created that everyone's taking notes? Yes, we really encourage that. And some are better than others. But I think it's one way for people to engage in the meeting, to take notes. And I've got in the book a set of symbols even where you can notate, you know, what's important, what you have questions about, what are your follow-up items, that type of thing.

But yeah, I think most of the people in my meetings do take notes. One of the things that I realized, it's someone that's on the team, he's on the coaching team that I work with here. And we have a weekly meeting. His name is Bubba. And he actually has your planner. And every single meeting, he sits and takes notes. And one of the things that I realized about him is that I have the perception of him, just because he does that, that action of taking notes, I have the perception of him that he cares.

Yes. And he hasn't said anything. that makes me think that? Or, I mean, obviously, his actions reinforce that belief, but it's the act of taking notes that makes me think, okay, this guy really cares about where we are and what we're doing. And that, again, it can be a tone setter in a meeting. And it really shows that they're paying attention. So my successor at Thomas Nelson, Mark Schoenwald, who is the CEO there now, I remember one of the things when I hired him, man, he would come into a meeting with a legal pad back in those days. And he would just take copious notes. And I thought, man, that guy is paying attention.

And I also had all these assumptions about he's a voracious learner. You know, he's very concerned about follow-up, and he was, and he always follows up, and he did. And all that stuff communicated the right things to his colleagues. And I think it upped everybody else's game. That's the thing I think sometimes we miss as leaders. When we're performing well in a meeting, it ups everybody's game. You know, it sets a new standard. My favorite line from your book was that the fundamental responsibility of the leader in the meeting is to drive a discussion that leads to an action.

or a decision. That is just so simplifying and clarifying in terms of what the leader should be focusing their energy on. If people are listening to this right now and all these red lights are going off in their head of like, oh, I've been doing this all wrong. I need to hit the reset button. What is step one to start moving in this direction? Get the book. There you go. That's right. And I would say, like, you can sit down and read this book in about an hour and a half and it's remarkably practical as well. Yeah, I would say that. And then I think give real serious consideration to deciding whether or not you need to have a meeting. And if you're going to have a meeting, take it to the next level. Make sure that it's purposeful, that it's worth everybody's time. Let's hone in on that last part of

the agenda, too, at the close of the meeting, which is outcomes. And so what does that portion of the meeting look like for you? And how do we make sure we set people up for success as we're leaving the meeting? Okay. So one of the things I didn't talk about that I intended to talk about that I want to bring up now because it's apropos to this this topic. And that is you need a meeting leader and what I call a meeting facilitator. So the meeting facilitator is kind of the second in command, the person who's going to take the agenda, make sure that it's distributed, said the meeting invites, all that kind of administrative stuff, but also is going to show up at the meeting, take minutes, keep time. So this is the person that the referee in a football game, you know, who says, okay, we're at eight

minutes and we allowed, we said we're going to allow 15 minutes for this topic, so just time check here. So they're the person that's keeping everybody on track. And then the person who at the end of the meeting, and this comes back to your question, that I'm going to say, for example, my assistant Jim is often the facilitator in these meetings. And I'll say, Jim, could you read to us the action items that we decided on? Now, we've been deciding these all through the meeting, right? But he's been gathering them into a discrete list, and he's going to read these at the end of the meaning. And each one of these needs to start with a verb, with an action verb, something that somebody's going to do. There needs to be a deliverable. You know, in other words, how are we going to know when it's

done? There's got to be a deliverable. You know, maybe it's a phone call that needs to be made. Maybe it's another meeting that needs to be had. Maybe it's a report that needs to be prepared, but there's some kind of deliverable. And then there's got to be a due date. So if Jim, maybe in the sort of the rush of the meeting, we didn't establish a due date, but we do it right here at the end. So we say, okay, Alex, when do you think you can get that item done? So Alex looks at his calendar. He says, I can get it done by the fifth. Awesome.

Okay, we put that down. So we let those people set the due dates. They know their calendars. They know their priorities. Unless it's something mission critical where I might come back to you and say, hey, I think we need it before then. You know, lots riding on this. So we're going to establish those.

And that takes usually about five minutes at the end of the meeting. Okay. And you carve out that five minutes to intentionally set that deadline, set that due date. I think sometimes, and again, it's probably not malicious intent. I would even say most of the time it's not even laziness. Sometimes even if we establish outcomes clearly at the end of the meeting, people get caught up in other things and they don't get done. So what can the leader do to ensure that once we establish those outcomes, people are actually taking action on those? Well, so then what needs to happen is that following the meeting, then whoever's the facilitator needs to compile the minutes, clean them up, send them out.

but the action items need to be at the top of the minutes. Because those are going to be the first item of business when we get back together in the meeting. That's going to be where we're going to talk about achievements and we're going to review those items. So what you've got to create is the expectation in the meeting that we're going to be sending out the action items. We expect you to integrate these into your task management system and get them done because there's going to be a reckoning, you know, in accounting the next time that we get together. And we're going to expect you to, if you said you're going to get it done by the fifth, we expect you to get it done by the fifth. A lot of people struggle with this whole idea of how do you create accountability and ownership and organizations. Yeah.

This is how you do it. It's at this granular level where you have meeting rhythms that are based on defined actions at the end and accountability for those actions at the beginning of the next meeting. That's powerful. So I think there's two groups of people that I'd love for you to speak to. The first is people that listen to this and they realize they are probably meeting heavy right now. Yeah. And they have too many meetings that could have been email. or too many people in their meetings, and they're realizing there's a lot of waste,

what would be your message for those people? I would say that as best practice for any company is that there ought to be a periodic review of the standing meetings. So there's two kinds of meetings. There's one-off meetings where you're trying to solve a specific problem. It's one and done. Then there are recurring meetings like staff meetings, weekly huddles, whatever, one-on-one meetings, production meetings, you know, meetings that happen on a recurring basis.

Those are the ones that can often outlive their usefulness, or you find a better way to do it. And you just need to revisit it. If you don't keep eliminating those meetings, then meetings will take over your business, right? And so the only organization on the planet that can keep adding without taking away is the federal government, apparently. But for the rest of us, we have to prune. And I think it's just the nature of, you know, it's entropy, it's the, you know, second law of thermodynamics, it's whatever, but things just, you know, tend to grow and devolve. And if we don't periodically come in and say, wait a second, I know that meeting was important at one point. In fact, since I wrote the book, we used to have weekly huddles.

We got to the place where we said, you know what, 90% of this can be disseminated in a weekly memo from the COO. So that's what we do. That's a pretty big deal. Has it been as effective? I think if you ask our team members, yes. Because I think it got to the place where people were rolling their eyes. You know, I could almost see it.

They wouldn't do it at the meeting, but I could tell it was. kind of losing its effectiveness. And I think you've got to be self-aware enough as a leader to say, is this meeting really delivering the value? And by delivering the value, I don't mean to me as a leader, but do people feel like they're deriving value out of it? And I think sometimes, you know, pulling your group is probably not the best practice, but pull aside a couple of the people that are in the meeting and say, hey, just want to check, are you still getting a value out of this meeting? And if not, let's kill it. Gosh, that's good. I love that you use the phrase kill it, because what I was instantly thinking of one of our core values here is shoot sacred cows. We describe a sacred cow

as anything that we say, well, we've always done it that way. That's the worst, right? And we say, like, we talk about it in our meetings. We talk about, man, I think that might be a sacred cow. We need to shoot that. We talk about sacred cow graveyards. But what is your rhythm as a leader of your business for looking in the mirror and making sure that you're evaluating and not allowing things to become fat or become wasteful in that way? My word for 2019 was prune. So I was just constantly looking for opportunities to cut back. Now, you have to understand, first of all, the subtitle of my book, Free to Focus,

is all about how to achieve more by doing less. Well, how do you achieve more by doing less? We got to prune. You got to prune out the non-essential. You got to focus on the high leverage activities that really drive results in your business. And so that just requires it periodically you're cutting back. So we're constantly asking that question, do we need to continue doing this? Do we need to continue making that expenditure?

Do we need to continue having this meeting? And I think it's a mindset and it's a cultural kind of thing inside of your organization where people have that awareness. I want to get back to that second audience. So the first one was people that look in the mirror and say, okay, we're a little bit wasteful right now with our meetings. The second is we coincide with business owners at events and people that listen to this podcast and people that are part of our coaching program, that they are on the treadmill. of running a business. And they are very much working in the business a lot and not always working on the business just because they're trying to keep the doors open because they just started this thing. Maybe they have a team of five to ten and they are chief everything officer. And a lot of

times we see that those people are hesitant to even start having meetings because anytime they're in a meeting, they can't do work. And work needs to get done for us to make payroll on Friday. So what would your advice be to that individual? say to that individual, it's like taking a trip in the car and saying, look, I got to just keep driving. I do not have time to look at the GPS. I don't have time to look at the map. I don't have time to pull over and make sure that I'm on the right track. You could end up a long way down the wrong road if you're not careful. And so I think that's the difference between working in the business and working on the business. And even for a startup, even for a solopreneur, there's got to be time

that you allocate to work on the business and to kind of pull away, and particularly as you begin to build your team where you realign with the team. Alignment is a caused thing and the natural state of things is disalignment. So as a leader, you have to cause that alignment. And the principal way to do that is through meetings. I mean, I don't know any other way to do it. You've got to have communication. You've got to make sure that everybody's got the same priorities so that you don't create a lot of sideways energy in the organization. And that's what starts happening a lot if you don't have alignment. It's just like going down the highway when your tires aren't aligned. Things start wobbling. Maybe a tire flies off. And that happens at organizations too.

Your job as a leader is to keep it aligned. And it starts with you being aligned with your purpose, with your mission, what you're trying to do yourself. And then as you add team members, keeping everybody aligned around that and rowing in the same direction. I think I mixed about 20 metaphors there. I love it. I was thinking about Jim Collins has that quote that says that leadership is 1% vision and 99% alignment. Yeah. And that's exactly what you're talking about.

So what is it look like to have an aligned organization? Paint the picture for us of what it like really, really feels and looks like to have everyone on the same page. Yeah, I think it feels like, first of all, being clear on the vision, being clear on the outcomes that you as a group are being held accountable for and holding one another accountable for, and that the book of the team's energy, investment in their attention, their energy, their financial resources are to achieve those outcomes. This is why I believe in a quarterly rhythm of setting goals. So I recommend this is in my book, Your Best Year Ever. But where I talk about having three quarterly goals, no more than three, if you have more than three, you simply do not have the resources to focus on that because you've got a business to maintain. So a goal represents something that's outside business as usual.

So you've got to limit your goals to magnify your achievement. So three goals per quarter, make sure everybody in the organization is aligned around those three goals. And this is the missing piece. And this is what I have in the full focus planner, but is you've got to connect those quarterly goals to daily tasks. So what are the tasks that I could do today? And I recommend that you identify three and only three big tasks for the day.

There could be other stuff you do, but you're going to count it as a win if you get those three tasks done. And more often than not, those three tasks are going to be related to one of those three quarterly goals. So I'm making steady incremental progress every day toward achieving those goals. When you've got a team that's doing that, you've got an aligned team. Limit your goals to magnify achievement. Man, tweet that. So good. I love it.

Okay, before we started today, you said that one of your favorite things that you do now is coaching, both the people on your team but also people outside your team. I'm going to ask you to put on the coach Michael hat right now and give us one action item that you hope we all take out of this conversation today. I think decide that meetings as you've been doing them, that day is over, that you're going to take them to the next level, that you're going to ramp it up. Because if you could improve the quality of meetings in your organization, just imagine. Imagine what could happen inside of your organization if all of a sudden people looked forward to coming to meetings. If real work was done inside of those meetings, that the quality of your decisions was better, that you were delivering results that everybody expected, that would change the culture and the outcome of your entire business. Well, Michael, I always say you are productivity personified. So I'm super grateful for your time today.

I know our audience as well. Thanks so much. Thanks, Alice. Every time I get to read or listen to something by Michael Hyder, certainly spend time with him, I always leave with one overarching thought. And that thought is that there is so much power in just being a little bit more intentional, a little bit more deliberate, and a little bit more purposeful in everything we do. I think that's the theme of this entire conversation about meetings, is that as a leader, there is great reward to you,

being intentional about the way that you hold your meetings. And I think one of the most practical action items from this conversation related to that topic of intentionality was to make sure that you never go to a meeting or certainly lead a meeting ever again that doesn't have an agenda. And so Michael and his team created a resource that we wanted to share for you. It's their meeting agenda templates. And what this is is it will help you fill out an agenda for every meeting you go to. that corresponds with all the content he just presented.

They're really easy to use. They're really functional, and they're going to be really easy for everyone on your team to understand. So if you want to take advantage of this free resource that Michael and his team were nice enough to provide, text the word meetings to 33444. Again, that's the word meetings to 33444,

or you can just click the link that's in the show notes. Go take advantage of this and make sure you never go to a meeting without an agenda ever again. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode, the Entree Leadership podcast. If you did, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends to subscribe. For a chance to win our $25 Amazon gift card, you can review this episode by clicking the length that's in the show notes. And be sure to follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. This episode was produced by Tim Hull, and it was edited and mixed by Will Rutter.

I'm Alex Judd, and on behalf of the entire Entree Leadership team, thanks for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like The Christy Wright Show. Hey, y'all, I'm Christy Wright. You know, it's so easy to feel stuck. You live life, just going through the motions, doing dishes, doing laundry, carpool lines, and a whole list of commitments that bring you no joy. We say yes to what everyone expects of us, and we have no energy or time for what we want. And let's be honest, most of the time, we don't even know what we want. Why do we live like that? God's never called us to. You know, I believe that the life God has for us is bigger and more amazing than any of us realize. That's why I want you to check out the Christy Wright Show. Every week, we will fire you up to break through what's holding you back and inspire you to create a life you love and are proud of. Each episode will help you build confidence in yourself and the God

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