In most manufacturing enterprises, people who work in the office spend a lot more time in meetings than their counterparts on the shop floor.
But very often, it’s the people on the shop floor who are more effective at running successful meetings. In part, this is because daily shop floor huddle meetings—a key element in precision of execution and a continuous improvement culture—are fast, focused, and results-oriented by design.
If your organization is frustrated with ineffective meetings where people aren’t engaged and are often distracted, it may be worth experimenting with radically changing the meeting behavior and seeing what happens next.
Here are five shop floor-inspired ways to start:
- Have a specific meeting goal and a clear agenda for achieving it.
Meeting fatigue is real. Too many meetings with too many people in attendance and no clear purpose are a big part of the problem. On the shop floor, huddle meetings have a clear and well-understood agenda: review the performance from the previous shift, identify issues, problem solve. Before sending out the next meeting invite, create an agenda that specifies the whats and whys, and consider sharing it as part of the invite. You might even want to outline each attendees’ role so there’s no question about why an individual has been invited or what’s expected once the meeting starts. - Control the invite list.
If you do step one, then step two is easy. Anyone without a clear part in contributing to the agenda probably doesn’t need to be in attendance. And, if you only invite people with a role, then it’s reasonable to expect their full attention during the meeting. It’s also easier and more comfortable for individuals to participate when they are in smaller groups. At the very least, it’s harder for any one person to get away with not being engaged or being focused on something other than the meeting when there are fewer people at the table. - Check the tech at the door.
If you want to run a productive meeting without distractions, stop accepting distracting behaviors such as phones on the table and laptops open. In huddle meetings, there’s usually one central performance board and everyone’s looking at it instead of at their individual screens. It can be the same in your meeting if you’re intentional about keeping all eyes on you as the presenter. Remember, you only invited people who need to be there, so they should be 100% there.
If you want, you can go old school and hand out pens and notebooks so people can record thoughts during the meeting (notes can be digitized later). But you might opt for a more interactive meeting with just one person capturing notes that can be shared with the group later. Consider standing up instead of sitting down—it’s healthier, it keeps people focused, and it can help keep the meeting on track and moving along. - Schedule only the time you need and stick to it.
Planning the agenda and invite list in advance will give you a more accurate sense of how long you really need to accomplish the meeting’s purpose. Schedule only what you require and be diligent about starting and stopping on time. if you intentionally limit distractions (see step 3) you should be able to significantly shorten meeting length, potentially cutting a typical 60-minute meeting to 30 minutes or less. People will be more willing to part with their tech and focus on your meeting if you give them back more time in their day. And, if you keep meetings short, people are more likely to come prepared.
If you do need a longer meeting, be sure to schedule 10-to-15-minute breaks every hour or so people can check messages or simply take a few minutes to refocus. - End with action.
Use the last few minutes of your meeting to make sure everyone’s clear on what to do next. Theoretically, if everyone at the meeting really needed to be there, then everyone should leave with at least one specific to-do item. Make reporting on the status of these to-dos the first item on the agenda for your next meeting.
Taking these steps increases accountability, encourages real progress, and can help prevent teams from getting stuck in firefighting mode or rehashing the same issues over and over. And it will make restarting the meeting cycle (setting the goal and agenda for the next meeting) much easier to do.
Different meeting behavior starts with a different type of meeting.
For organizations looking to gain efficiencies and optimize all aspects of their business, overhauling meeting behavior should be a top focus area. Creating meetings where everyone is fully engaged and real work gets done may mean your next meeting needs to look a little different than your last one. By being intentional and clearly communicating expectations, you can plan your best meeting yet—and ensure that every minute of it counts.
