We’re all familiar with the adage, “The more the merrier.” That seems to be the principle by which many managers decide who should attend their meetings. That’s great for a party, but not for a business meeting.
It seems to make more sense to follow this principle: “The length of a meeting rises with the square of the number of people present.” So, be stingy with your invitations. Invite only those people necessary to achieve the goal(s) of the meeting.
That advice makes sense, but how do you apply it? Perhaps the best way is by asking one question about everybody you’re considering inviting—How do you expect this person to contribute to the meeting? Be specific. Could you explain to this person what you expect from him or her? If you don’t know how you expect the person to contribute, maybe you shouldn’t include him or her.
If it would make sense to invite some people for only part of the meeting, then do so. If you schedule the items on the agenda with start and stop times and you keep to that schedule, you can have participants show up for one part of the meeting, then leave for the rest. It’s generally better to lose a few minutes of meeting time to the disruption of people arriving and leaving than to keep people in the meeting when they are not yet or no longer necessary.
Sure, that may sound harsh. And yes, it’s natural to not want to exclude people from a meeting. But it’s a balancing act between ensuring a fully democratic process and making the most of the time. Compromise, by appointing or letting employees appoint representatives. You can shorten meetings and reduce the number of participants, so you save time—and money.
You can designate an individual to represent a group of his or her peers. Then, he or she is responsible for discussing the agenda with the others and eliciting comments, suggestions, concerns, and so forth to present at the meeting. (If any employees or other managers question this method of holding meetings, you need only refer them to the U.S. Congress.
Certainly nobody would expect 260,000,000 Americans to meet in Washington, D.C. to deliberate and make decisions!)
Maybe you truly believe that more can be better, depending on the purpose of the meeting. There’s some truth to that argument— although maybe not enough to prove that you should include everyone in the meeting.
Do you want to share some information? You can often do so at least as effectively and efficiently by another means. It might make more sense and save time if you provide the information through memos or e-mail. Then your people could read the information, think about it, and attend the meeting only to ask questions and/or discuss the information.
Do you want to motivate? It’s true that the direct approach generally works best, rather than trying to motivate through representatives. But if your purpose for meeting is to motivate, keep it short. The best leaders can usually do the most good in the fewest words.
Do you want to make decisions? It depends on the method you choose whether it makes sense to have a lot of people. If you just want a vote, you can do so without a meeting. If you want a discussion, then maybe it’s logical to invite everybody— for just the discussion and the vote.
Do you want to gather input and/or generate ideas? You may want all of your people there—or you may want to send out an e-mail to all and find out who’s interested in providing input and/or coming up with ideas.
If you need any more reasons to keep your invitation list short, consider the political: it’s easier to justify not inviting a lot of individuals than to justify not inviting a few individuals. If you invite only the people who are most important, who are essential, there will be enough people who are not invited that none of them should take it personally as a slight. But if you invite any people who are not essential, then you may feel pressure to invite everybody, for fear of offending somebody.
Taken From : The Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings
