Page 53 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Regular readers will know I love a football analogy! So, imagine Old Trafford at 3 pm on a Saturday
afternoon. There’s probably just over 75,000 people in that ground when United’s winning goal is
slotted into the net a minute from time. BUT how many of them took a touch? 74,879 are in the
terrace cheering the red devils on, they didn’t get a kick. Eleven of the players on the pitch are with
the away team, the ref, his assistants, the backroom staff, the young lad selling the programme and
the man who heats up the pies, they’re all there “at the meeting” but when it comes down to
scoring that winning goal … it’s Maguire to Pogba to Rashford, Rashford rounds the keeper and
smashes the ball into the back of the net.

It can be the same with meetings at work. It’s nice to have a pie and it’s nice to have someone
cheering you on, but at the end of the day (football cliché there), you only REALLY need a handful of
people to score that winning goal. Anyone whose attendance doesn’t make a difference is just a face
in the crowd.

And talking of which …

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

If you turned up at your friend’s wedding and realised that you’d gone to the wrong church, you
wouldn’t stay to hear the vows and go to their reception instead.

This happened to my friend a few weeks back by the way. He’d arrived late and so had to sit at the
back and was just wondering why he didn’t recognise anyone when the organist struck up “Here
Comes The Bride”. A total stranger walked in dressed in a bridal gown and the penny dropped. He
waited for the bride to pass and then snook out the door through which she’d just entered.

Have you ever been in a work meeting like this? When you realise you’re in the wrong meeting (even
if your name is on the attendees list), why don’t you just get up and leave? There is no creaking
church door, no elderly aunts to tut as you squeeze past treading on her toes, no groom wondering
who that mysterious man is who left red face as soon as his fiancée arrived!

You don’t, though, do you? You sit there thinking of all the work you must get done when you finally
escape this stuffy room!
It would be really awkward to get up and leave – that’s why no-one ever does. So it is important that
we manage this for our meeting attendees and before sending the invites, take one last look and ask
if they will add value. Be brutal for the greater good.

3 - No frequent or recurring meetings.

Recently, a CIO friend of mine decided to cancel a regular Monday morning “State of The Portfolio”
meeting. The catch up had been a nice chance to see colleagues face to face and discuss any issues
or challenges. Nice idea.

The thing was though that increasingly they were just reading from project management software
entries or their project’s Gantt chart which everyone has access to anyway. Indeed, most of the
things they’d discuss had been flagged and were in the process of being addressed.
They decided that this was a pointless duplication and unless there was a major issue that needed
talking over, they’d cancel the recurring meeting (whilst leaving the diary space available just in
case!) Six months later, there hasn’t been a single issue that needed this weekly meeting to be held!
All that time wasted!