Today I found a brilliant article on the problem with meetings and how to run a successful one. I loved it. Like the author, I tend to bag on meetings. But that’s because in my 4+ years as a working professional I can count the number of truly valuable meetings I’ve had on my fingers. Ok, maybe I need my toes too — but still!

The author claims there are two types of meetings: status and creative. I think status meetings are incredibly overused. It’s not that I don’t believe there is value in monitoring project status. It’s that I don’t believe it’s necessary to hold a workflow disrupting meeting to relay what could easily be written in a couple paragraphs.

Most of the time things are chugging along smoothly and your status update won’t prompt any corrective action. Even when things are rocky, a written update should trigger as much concern as an in person update. Once the negative report has been made, it might make sense to call a meeting to figure out how to address the issues facing the team but such a meeting is no longer a status meeting — it’s a creative meeting. The goal is to make a plan for overcoming the obstacles facing the project as opposed to sharing information.

I’ve seen big productivity gains come from converting synchronous processes into asynchronous ones. If doing so results in value loss, then maybe the process shouldn’t change. However, if there is no noticeable difference then it is incumbent on you to make the shift. In the case of status meetings, I think that switching over to the written, asynchronous, update might actually increase value. Having the report documented incentivizes people to put more effort into expressing their thoughts clearly and with sufficient detail.

Creative meetings, on the other hand, I actually like the idea of. Unleashing the collective brainpower of a group of people on a problem is the holy grail of team productivity. The problem is that these meetings rarely live up to their potential because they are so hard to run effectively.

The author details two essential components of an effective creative meeting. The first is an agenda. Everyone needs to be on the same page about why they are in the meeting and an agenda spells that out. It states the goal of the meeting and the proposed plan for getting there. The agenda empowers the second critical element of an effective meeting: a referee. The referee’s job is twofold: to ensure progress is being made and to make sure people are engaged. As it turns out, the two are related. As soon as people sense that progress isn’t being made, they disengage and start playing Candy Crush on their phones. A good referee keeps careful watch over the meeting participants for signs of disengagement. When they see someone’s attention slip, it is the referee’s responsibility to reengage those people. Sounds hard right? It is. There are so many things that can throw a meeting out if its flow and being able to respond to all of them requires deft improvisation from the referee.

Thinking back on the best meetings I’ve participated in, they all had these two components — though I didn’t recognize them at the time. I still think the best meeting is no meeting. But, if it can’t be avoided, I’ll make sure to set an agenda and to bring a whistle.