EMPOWERED

CHAPTER 22Effective Meetings

I need to confess up front that I have never been a fan of meetings. I know that my experiences sitting in countless poorly prepared, ineptly run, slow moving, wastes of time that prevented me from doing something I considered infinitely more important have permanently biased me against them.

That said, I have also been in some meetings that were very different. Where the organizer was prepared, and information was clear and logical, a solid decision was made, and everyone in the room at least understood—even if they didn't personally agree (the all‐important disagree and commit).

The result is that, when I coach people, I'm very particular about how they run meetings, or even if they really need to hold a meeting. Meetings are a very easy way for other executives to form judgments about the people on the product team, especially the product manager.

An important caveat before we jump into this.

I'm not talking here about meetings between members of the product team, such as a standup or retro, or any number of daily interactions. If the product manager and product designer sit down over a video call or in person to look at a prototype, while they are literally meeting, that's just daily work and not the subject of this chapter. We are talking here about gatherings that go beyond the product team. It may include the stakeholders or the executives, or partners, or members of other teams.

The first thing to understand is that the biggest pain about ...