Guide to Organising Meetings

Guide to organising meetings

People within the institution need training in respect of how to organise meetings. This guide has therefore been prepared to help those in positions of responsibility within the institution to follow the appropriate procedures for organising meetings, to identify the need to organise meetings and to improve the efficiency of the institution. There will be a meeting arranged to discuss this.

PROCEDURE FOR ORGANISING A MEETING

1. Decide upon the meeting to be arranged
2. Book the room with the person responsible for taking room bookings, who will be located somewhere other than where the meeting is to take place
3. Notify the people required to attend the meeting that the meeting is to take place and that they are required to attend
4. Ensure that other people seeking to hold a different meeting at the same time in the same place but with different people present do not do so
5. Attend the meeting
6. Go down the pub

IDENTIFYING PEOPLE WHO NEED TO ORGANISE MEETING

There are many reasons for organising meetings. It is important to consider at the outset the difference between the need for a meeting and the need to organise a meeting.
It is an unavoidable frustration of life that certain people feel compelled to organise meetings. These are the sort of people who will come up with very complex arguments to justify to others why a meeting is required, so that they can go on to organise it. These people tend to fall into one of several categories:
1. There is the common or garden ‘meeting organiser’, (hereinafter referred to as a ‘meeter’), who wants to organise meetings due to their own social inadequacy by virtue of the fact that unless they compel people to meet with them, they would spend their time alone. Often these people cannot cope with one to one conversations.
2. There is the meglo-meeter who needs to arrange meeting to demonstrate their perceived power over others.
3. There is the social hedo- meeter who wants any excuse to get groups of people together, (usually whom they like), to have a good time.
4. There is the manago-meeter who through a combination of education and mistake believes that meetings are a good way of disseminating information/ boosting morale/ saving time/ combining ‘forces’, (sort of two brains are better than one stuff for people who need the assistance of a second brain to progress in life...).
5. The efficio-meeter who understands that occasionally a meeting may be a necessary evil.

TECHNIQUES FOR COPING WITH COMPULSIVE MEETING ORGANISERS, (‘MEETERS’)

If you happen to work with somebody who feels the need to organise meetings there are several different techniques available for coping with this. One is of course to avoid attending them and their meetings completely, (see the publication Avoiding Meetings and Staying Employed for Art Lecturers). It is important to remember a few basic principles:

1. These are sad people
2. They probably don’t realise that they have a problem
3. It may not be a treatable condition
4. It may be a contagious condition
5. One tends to find that people who like being on committees especially feel the need to organise meetings. Avoid them like the plague, (see the Desiderata - ‘Avoid loud, vexatious and downright irritating people, especially those who feel the need to organise meetings’).
If you find that you are having to work with a compulsive meeting organiser, try to stay calm, speak to them slowly, appear to agree with them and always carry your diary, (filled with spaces that do not leave slots of time of more than an hour at any one time - even if you have to make up fictitious engagements).
Certain tactics may be used to try to discourage avid ‘meeters’, such as pointing out the inefficiency of holding most meeting, (see later details of efficiency of meetings). If, however, you have to put up with working with a ‘meeter’ all the time the best options are drink or leave!

GUIDANCE UPON ORGANISING MEETINGS

There are some basic considerations which need to be borne in mind when efficiently organising meetings. These are based upon the same premise as that for the investigation of criminal offences, much like a murder enquiry really:

1. Who
i) who is to be invited to the meeting
ii) who do you actually want to attend the meeting
iii) who is to arrange the meeting
iv) who must be contacted to book the meeting
v) who must be told about the meeting as a matter of etiquette
vi) who is to be in charge of the meeting
vii) who is to decide what happens at the meeting
viii) who is to record the outcome of the meeting
ix) who is to be informed or affected by the meeting
x) who will make the actual decisions at the meeting
xi) who should think they are making the decisions at the meeting
xii) who would it be better not to tell about the meeting
xiii) who will say what you want them to say at the meeting
xiv) who needs to be watched/ restrained/ controlled during the meeting
xv) who might try to subvert the meeting
xvi) who must take what action after the meeting

2. What
i) what is the meeting for
ii) what is the meeting supposed to give the impression to others of being for
iii) what do you want the meeting to decide
iv) what are the implications of getting the meeting wrong
iii) what is going to happen after the meeting.

3. Where
i) where is the meeting to be held
ii) where was the last meeting held, (if there was one - bearing in mind people may expect the next meeting to be held in the same place)
iii) where is the next meeting to be held
iv) where would you really rather be other than at a meeting

4. When
i) when is the meeting to take place
ii) when is the next meeting to take place
iii) when do the decisions reached at the meeting have to be actioned
iv) when can you escape from the meeting

5. Why
i) why is a meeting necessary
ii) why are you, (as opposed to anybody else), organising the meeting
(NB this will be because of one of the following:-
a) you are a ‘meeter’,
b) you are a ‘mug’
c) you are a sad bastard
d) you have no choice either because it is urgent or important
e) you think you are important)
iii) why are you not using the mode of communication that you are using to inform people of the meeting to convey the information that you want to convey during the course of the meeting, (if this is a meeting to disseminate information)
iv) why are you wasting people’s time
v) why are you not talking to people one to one
vi) why does it take a lot of people to reach a decision one person could make or has already made on a previous occasion
vii) why do you need to read this guidance

6. How
i) how is the meeting to be organised
ii) how are the decisions reached at the meeting to be communicated
iii) how can you avoid having to arrange the next meeting
iv) how are you going to avoid attending the next meeting
v) how are you going to convince the people who are at the meeting to decide what you want them to decide or to listen to what you want them to hear
vi) how are you going to convince people that they are making the decisions they want to make whilst you persuade them to make the decisions you want them to make
vii) how are you going to subvert the meeting
viii) how do you stop people talking drivel/ wittering on for hours/ boring you rigid at meetings
ix) how do you persuade a ‘meeter’ not to hold a meeting
x) how do you keep your job if this gets out

EFFICIENCY OF MEETINGS

If a lecturer is paid on average, say £26,000 per annum, that amounts to an average of £125 per day. If a lecturer is assumed to do an eight hour day, it costs £15.63 per hour for that lecturer to be engaged in meetings. If, say, ten lecturers on that salary are engaged in a two hour meeting that costs say £312.50, not taking account of the disruption caused. If in a college say 30 lecturers on salaries of £26,000 pa were each required to attend two meetings of two hours per week, that would cost a college £1875 per week or £97,500 p.a.

If say thirty students attend a meeting for half an hour when they would otherwise have been working, that is 15 hours of college work or the equivalent of nearly half a week’s work that is not done.

Could a meeting that costs say £312 to hold be avoided by one person being employed to make decisions; or the decisions of those who have already made the decisions but are holding a meeting to ratify the decisions, just being implemented without a meeting.

NOTICE OF MEETINGS

Notice of meetings may be communicated by
i) standard notice, such as on the notice board
ii) word of mouth
iii) announcement at a meeting held to plan the next meeting
iv) organised communication to specified representatives who themselves notify others of the meeting
v) e-mail
vi) fax
vii) telephone
viii) memo/letter
Such notice must be given in sufficient time for all necessary parties to receive adequate notification of the meeting.