I am a sales executive of a Big IT company. I was sitting in a meeting in which, same discussion points are discussed over and over again in different words and by different people. They modified them and put their own opinions as suggestions. I was required only for presentation of certain figures I had gathered.

Throughout the meeting, I was not clear about one thing. What was the goal? What was necessary and what was not? Why can’t they have a fixed agenda, a pre-informed expectations list for all and the awareness of points that are needed for discussion?

When you make the MOM of such meeting, you can easily summarize all the points in a single page. Then why do they need hours to discuss the same? And most of such meetings start at unusual hour after office closing time when they are free to waste their hours for discussions.

These big people, who are the key members for discussion, have the comfort of going home in their luxurious cars with their wives waiting at home to serve dinner. But we sales executives are too small for such privileges. We have to run after buses, trains to get home and we need to make arrangements for our dinner on our own.

Aren’t these meetings just meant for Top management? When all the strategic decisions are poured down from top to bottom, what do we do in these meetings? We may put forward some points for discussion but most of them are ignored and rest forgotten. These meetings never made any difference in our lives.

And at the end of the meeting, we get very nice conclusions from the seniors: “We should have more such meetings in future.” At this point of time, we feel like running away.

Why can’t they do the discussions in the office hours? Are they paying us extra for that extra hour they have taken? I wish I could be a part of board of directors who get paid for every hour of the meeting they attend. I would be very happy to attend any meetings in that case. But today the picture is, you have hundred personal problems roaming over your head at the time and over that these meetings add to your frustration. When you want to pack your bags and go home as soon as possible, someone calls you for an emergency meeting. And after the meeting, we come to know that was never so urgent that we needed to wait after office hours. Why can’t they understand that we are young and we want some life out of office, which we would like to enjoy? What is the use of such meeting, where the level of enthusiasm in the participants of zero? How will they be any good for discussion? Of now you may say, they don’t need to because they are just too small for that.

I have attended many such meetings and I have learnt a lot from them. Though they are boring at most of the times but there had been certain meetings where I could find certain good things. Some of them were really useful but most of them ended up with no particular conclusion and the steps decided were never followed afterwards. If a meeting happens and the attendees decided certain points for action, they need to be implemented also.

From the experiences I had through various meetings in the companies I have worked for , I would like to draw some conclusions or rather give some suggestions which may help us in reducing efforts and time involved in these meetings.

1. Have a particular agenda of the meeting which should be distributed to all the attendees before the meeting starts. It should include:

a. Figures to be discussed

b. Areas of discussion

c. People attending meeting

d. Major concern areas

e. What is expected out of whom

2. The flow of the meeting should be in pre-decided manner, where everyone knows who is going to start the meeting, end the meeting and the flow in between. To make it smoother, we can have a moderator who will ensure all the areas decided are discussed and keep the discussion short and sweet.

3. A person should be allotted to jot down all the discussion points so that no point is missed after the meeting is over. The MOM should be prepared by this person and the same should be distributed to all the attendees, absentees and other concerned. There are chances that people forget the points after discussion or they miss out on writing some. This makes the MOM a necessary part of discussion and an additional benefit for absentees as they also need to know about the points discussed.

Just these 3 simple steps and they meetings can be made so healthy and fruitful.

Also we should take care of some point which one may not find very important but they actually matter a lot:

1. Always keep something to eat so that if a person feels bored of discussion , he can refresh himself

2. Never keep the meetings after office hours until it is extremely urgent because by that time the enthusiasm already dies down and people have a different mindset of going home and not attending the meeting

3. The place should not be too hot or too cold which will make them more uncomfortable

4. The seating arrangement should be such that everyone is clearly visible to everyone else so that people feel as they are important part of the meeting and they also remain active over the time.

5. The moderator should try to ensure that everyone present in the meeting speaks and encourage participation. It is very common that people feel sleepy when they are not involved in the discussion

6. There should not be extreme grilling on figures of a person in front of all people but the figure should just be presented and the conclusions should be made in a simple manner