Page 52 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

How to run an IT project meeting. The musky scent of success, do we all need

to be more Elon!?

“It’s the most pointless meeting, nothing to do with my
work but I have to attend. I just zone out for an hour”.
A Project Management contractor friend of mine said
this as he told me about a monthly meeting that had
just appeared again in his diary with the subject “Team
Meeting – All Staff To Attend”.
“You’re not staff,” I said, “You’re a contractor.”

He shrugged and gave a resigned sigh. Yeah, but what
are you gonna do?”

The meeting was a monthly update given by the CEO
about the health of the company, sales performance,
new benefits and incentives for staff and, at the end, a bottle of wine was given to the employee of
the month. Again, as a contractor, none of this applies to my friend leaving him feeling a little left
out and not part of the team. It’s actually quite demotivating him being there!

Now, I’m not even going to get into the IR35 implications of treating a contractor like a member of
staff, that’s a whole other blog right there!

No, this one is about meetings. How to run them and who should be there. In an industry where
many IT Projects are still failing, or at least not yielding maximum returns, I can’t help wondering if
we spend too much time sitting around the boardroom table when we could and should be working
in and on our projects.

Just this last week, I made calls to three industry colleagues with whom I could not be connected
because they were in meetings. When I finally did talk with them I asked how their meetings had
been and what end they had served – of the three only one told me their meeting was strategically
aligned with their business or project goals, none of the three said that the meeting had any value,
one of them even said, “Face shown, box ticked.” Is that how little we value the precious resource
that is an IT Project Manager? No wonder so many projects fail?

Elon Musk knows how to run a meeting. Tesla famously reframes the accepted norm and I love an
email that he sent out about meetings. This was shared by Justin Bariso on Inc.com and Business
Insider and should be posted on every meeting room wall on the planet!

These are Elon Musk's three rules for better meetings:

1. Smaller meetings! Four to Six people MAX! No large meetings.

2. If YOU are not adding value to the meeting, get up and leave.

3. No frequent or recurring meetings.
Brilliant isn’t it?! Let’s break it down.

1 – Smaller Meetings