We’ve all been there: meetings that could have-or should have-been emails. They’re a tedious yet seemingly ubiquitous part of running a practice. Meetings are the glue that holds a company together, but is there a better way to run them? What slows them down so much anyway? Let’s chat about best practices for time management in meetings, so you can focus on what matters most: your patients.

What Throws You Off-Track?

Meetings are often scheduled with the best of intentions. After all, your team has to communicate. But it’s the little things that snowball into one disastrous outcome: a painfully overlong meeting. Let’s take a look at the potential obstacles throwing a proverbial wrench in your plans.

• Poor agenda planning. A meeting with a poor agenda spirals quickly, and after the meeting you think of three different projects you meant to bring to the table. At the end of the day, your employees wonder: what was that meeting even about? 

• Poor preparation. Without proper preparation, a meeting can quickly grind to a halt. The items on the meeting agenda cannot be properly addressed or solved if your team members have not reviewed meeting materials prior to the meeting date. In this case, your project’s problems get pushed back and back until they become emergencies.

• Rogue segues. While running a meeting, it’s easy to become distracted by other projects. You may find yourself spending thirty minutes discussing the annual budget, when the original meeting topic was Q4 planning. These rogue segues prevent your team from accomplishing their meeting goals, and eat up precious time. 

• Inability to table issues. Solving an issue can be time-consuming. In an overly ambitious meeting, you try to tackle everything at once. By addressing each issue as they come up, you’re on the fast track to an endless meeting. 

Tips and Tricks

Even the bleakest of meetings can benefit from meeting strategy. With the right tips and tricks, you can maximize meeting efficiency and free up more time for patient care. Let’s review some of the best ways to keep your team on track. 

• Nominate a strong moderator. Assign one person on your team the role of moderator. This person will be responsible for circumventing off-topic subjects and interjections, moving along the agenda at a reasonable pace, and summarizing follow-up steps.

• Set firm boundaries. A detailed, clear, and thorough agenda is critical to a successful meeting. For the agenda to be effective you have to stick to it. Set agenda items and defer to the meeting moderator to ensure that irrelevant projects are not brought up. Set strict start and end times for your meeting. By having a hard stop time, your team members can plan their days accordingly and avoid getting stuck in a meeting time-suck. Any issues that cannot be resolved in one meeting should be moved to the next. 

• Assign homework. At the end of your team meeting, there should be clear next steps. Each team member should understand any action items assigned to them. By delegating tasks, you are already setting your next meeting up for success. This “homework” helps ensure everyone comes prepared to the next meeting. 

• Keep an issues list. To help avoid unnecessary segues and extraneous discussion, keep an issues list. Ask yourself: is the issue urgent? Is it easily solvable? Who does it concern? These questions will help you determine which issues should be prioritized, and which can wait for the next meeting. This way your team is able to focus on the issues at hand without getting bogged down by problems that are less time-sensitive.

Staying the Course

Getting a week’s worth of meetings on-track is a small challenge. Keeping them that way requires consistent maintenance. Avoid a slip back into chaos by keeping your meeting procedures like clockwork. Implement a plan-in writing-to keep each other accountable. Above all, practice these tips and tricks to make the most of your meeting time without wasting team efforts. With the right meeting strategy, you are free to devote more of your time to patient care. 

To learn more about how Solutions Maven Consulting can help your practice, contact us at toni@thesolutionsmaven.com.