Meetings are a fact of life in all organisations, yet studies indicate that people find the majority of their meetings to be unproductive and inefficient.
A North Carolina University survey of 182 senior managers in a range of industries reported 71% of meetings to be unproductive.
Source: Harvard Business review, 2017, Stop the Meeting Madness.
External meetings are fundamentally important because they provide a forum for people to raise and address actions and roadblocks, share updates and ideas, make decisions and build relationships. External meetings are often the face of your project.
For the context of this blog, an external meeting is a group session run with people that you work with from other areas of your organisation.
As a member of a project team, you will be often asked to run or facilitate regular external meetings. If you are tasked to run these meetings, you might want to consider using an action log. The action log is a simple excel spreadsheet that captures what each person is responsible for, the status of the action and the timeframes to work towards.
Below is an example of an action log.
For the action log to be effective, it should be stored in a shared location so that all meeting participants can quickly find and review what they are responsible for.
Using the action log in your regular meetings will ensure that all items that require attention are addressed on a consistent basis. It also provides an accountability framework for people to complete work because they will be asked to provide an update at the next meeting.
Your role as the facilitator is to ensure that actions are understood and matters are resolved. It is a vital component of creating a culture of action in that it provides transparency to everyone in the meeting on what everyone is doing to help the project move forward.
The role of facilitator can be rotated to give everyone an opportunity to run the meeting. A facilitator’s tasks may include:
- Reminding participants on what was said at the previous meeting
- Going through action items one by one and asking for an update
- Filtering the action log to narrow down actions e.g. sorting by person and higher priority items
- Adding actions to the action log as agreed in the meeting
- Encouraging longer discussions to be handled out of session
- Updating the status of the action e.g. if the action is closed
- Sending minutes post-meeting summarising what was discussed and agreed
I was tasked with facilitating more than 30 external meetings with various stakeholders while I was working at a large and complex federal government agency in Australia. In 20 minutes, I was able to consistently cover 10 to 15 action items. Meeting participants indicated the meetings were efficient and helped the conversation progress dynamically.
In conclusion, the action log is a simple yet effective tool you can use in your project’s external meetings. It provides transparency on what must be done to ensure success and creates a culture of action. The role of the facilitator is important and should be tailored to the needs of the meeting.
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About the Author
Kirtan Jamnadas is a management consultant with over seven years of experience successfully delivering complex projects at four large federal government agencies in Australia.
Kirtan is passionate about initiating and driving projects forward while ensuring that all stakeholders are engaged and on board with the project’s goals.
With his employer’s support, Kirtan established the company’s project management practice – this included developing all the frameworks, tools and templates to ensure projects are set up for success.
Let’s start the conversation today.
About my blogs
This blog is the first in a series of fortnightly project management blogs.
My mission is to provide current and aspiring project managers with simple and practical tools to help streamline operations, optimise performance and achieve project success.
My project management blogs will cover various aspects of project management, including project planning, risk management, stakeholder communication, and team collaboration. Moreover, I’ll share my personal experiences of managing complex projects and how I overcame the challenges to become a better project manager.
-Kirtan
