Preparing for Decision-Making Meetings
Tim’s email seemed like an innocent enough request. “Our graphic designer missed this week’s deadline. Gather in the conference room at ten to decide what to do.” Since he never actually said “meeting,” Tim’s message caught me off guard. “Gather” sounded like a family picnic, with Golden Retrievers and frolicking. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In the conference room, comments started flying. “Our proofs are always late!” “Maybe we should switch designers.” “Have we thought to ask for regular status reports?” “Our current designer is too expensive.” “Are we trying to fix the designer, or figure out what to do to get back on schedule?” We were having a ball venting, but after an hour, we didn’t seem to have made much progress. We had, however, wasted an hour of everyone’s time.
Every decision-making conversation has three hidden conversations lurking just out of sight. One is about what we’re trying to accomplish by even bothering to make a decision. After all, we could just let things fall where they may. The second conversation is about the criteria we’ll use to make the decision. The last conversation is about finding and choosing between different options.
It’s easy to let these conversations get intertwined. In the above meeting, all three conversations got jumbled. Decision criteria like on-time delivery and cost got mixed up with possible options, like switching designers and asking for status reports. No one even followed up on the question of why we were there: to evaluate the designer or just recover from a schedule slip.
My first boss once said, “Never call a meeting to make a decision. Work with people one on one, and then call the meeting to let the group share and own the decision that’s been made.” It was great advice. Even if you can’t make the decision airtight before the meeting, you’ll save time in the long run by having short one-on-one conversations with team members to frame the discussion.
Chat with each team member before the meeting. Use these talks to reach alignment — or identify areas of contention — on the three conversations. Ask what each person thinks the decision should accomplish, what criteria is most important, and what options should be considered. Here is how Tim’s conversation with me could have gone.
Tim: We’re meeting to discuss what to do about the designer’s schedule slip. What do you think the purpose of the meeting should be?
Stever: Let’s figure out what to do to get back on schedule. Before the next project, we can decide if we want to stay with the same designer.
Tim: What criteria should we be using to evaluate options for getting back on schedule?
Stever: We should get back on schedule in a way that is least disruptive to people’s personal lives. We should also keep costs reasonable, but that’s second priority.
Tim: What options are you thinking of?
Stever: We could use the design from our last product. We could use whatever the designer has done so far, and hope that it’s good enough. We could hire an intern to work on the instruction book while the designer works on the product.
Each person Tim talks to will either reinforce the purpose, criteria, and options, or will add new ones. Tim can work on reaching alignment during the small talks, in which case the meeting itself is just a celebration of the decision that has already been made.
If we disagree in places, Tim’s ready. He can start by highlighting where we all agree. Then the team can work towards alignment on a common purpose for the meeting. Once we’re aligned around a purpose, we can move on to choose the criteria we’ll use to make the decision. Then we can gather the options from the small meetings, or brainstorm more if needed. Lastly, we can evaluate and choose an option using the criteria.
By laying the right pre-decision groundwork one on one, you can greatly speed up your decision-making meetings by arriving with clarity around the three conversations underlying the decision. You get the further bonus of collecting all the criteria and options the group might suggest person-by-person, without the interpersonal tensions that can prevent people from speaking up in a group.
Preparing for Decision-Making Meetings
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