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Bob FrischCary Greene
April 26, 2016
When a sports team finishes a game, they usually don t gather up their gear and
immediately leave the court, rink, field or locker room. The players and
coaches take a few minutes for a post-game meeting a ritual that s just as
important as the pre-game warm-up.
In our view, participants in business meetings can benefit from the same
exercise. A quick post-meeting wrap-up with attendees before they leave the
room goes a long way to ensuring the gathering achieved what it set out to, and
that future get-togethers will also prove successful. Here are three steps to
take at the end of each meeting though you can, of course, dial up or down each
component as the situation warrants. Once you ve done this in person, make sure
to follow up in writing, as well.
Confirm key decisions and next steps. Recap what was decided in the meeting,
who is accountable for following through, when implementation will occur, and
how it will be communicated. You want every attendee to leave the meeting with
the same understanding of what was agreed, so there s little chance of anyone
reopening the issues later. One client we ve worked with preps for this
end-of-meeting review by writing down decisions as they are made on a flip
chart so nothing is forgotten or overlooked. He also notes action items,
including who is responsible, when they should happen and how status will be
reported back to the group.
Develop communication points. If a colleague not at the meeting asks an
attendee What happened? he or she should know what to say. So before you wrap
up, put the question to the group. What are the most important things we
accomplished in our time here together? As the group responds, capture the key
points on a flip chart or whiteboard and briefly summarize them. Once you have
alignment on what should be communicated to others ask everyone if there are
any parts of the discussion that they wouldn t want to be shared. Some
information might be confidential; perhaps some ideas aren t quite ready for
dissemination. Be as specific as possible here so everyone clearly understands
what is off limits. Then, as soon as possible after the meeting, send your
agreed-upon talking points to everyone in an email. The goal of this exercise
is not to give people a script to read from. It s to provide guidance on the
key messages they should convey, and what they should keep to themselves, if
asked, so the rest of the organization gets a consistent picture of what went
on. After a recent strategy meeting of the top 30 executives at a major
technology company, for example, the group decided on these communication
points:
This was not a one-time event, but the beginning of this group coming together
as a senior leadership team.
We talked about our strategy, which is to build a collection of great
businesses in strong categories.
We agreed that each business should focus on driving its own growth, but, where
it makes sense, units and functions should leverage each other s best practices
and capabilities. We captured some ideas for how to start doing this and talked
about opportunities for leaders to grow and take on new boundary-spanning
roles.
Gather session feedback. Especially if your group will meet regularly, ask
attendees for feedback on the session while it s fresh in their minds. This is
an oft-missed opportunity to learn both what people liked and what they would
change. Instead of asking a broad question like What feedback do you have? ,
which often yields equally vague and unhelpful responses, break the discussion
into what we call roses (positives) and thorns (negatives). Start with the
latter. Tell attendees to think about everything they have received or done
related to the meeting from the time they were invited to the review, including
any prereads, prework and aspects of the meeting itself, such as location, time
quality of the coffee, etc. Then ask, What could be improved? Avoid debating
the suggestions raised, but do ask questions to clarify what s being said.
Finally, turn to roses. Ask the group What went well? What should we be sure
to do again in the future? Coming on top of the recap of decisions, next steps
and talking points, this last discussion helps you end the session a positive
note.
When you embed a regular post-meeting debrief that incorporates these three
elements into your meetings, you can help your team dramatically improve its
play.
Bob Frisch is the managing partner of the Strategic Offsites Group, a
Boston-based consultancy, and author of Who s In The Room? How Great Leaders
Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them (Jossey-Bass, 2012) and coauthor of
Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday
Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace (HarperOne, 2015).
Cary Greene is a partner of the Strategic Offsites Group, a Boston-based
consultancy, and co-author of Simple Sabotage: A Modern Field Manual for
Detecting & Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace
(HarperOne, 2015).