Seven Steps to Redesigning Your Meeting on the Fly
You’re in the middle of a meeting, or maybe a retreat, and you realize that things are not going as planned. Someone raised a topic they say must be discussed before the next agenda items and two others have started talking about the methodology to use for the experiment the group had agreed needs to be performed, started disagreeing, and were seeking support for their view.
After spending days, or weeks, or even months designing the perfect agenda it can be disheartening to feel like thing are not going the way you planned. This can even happen when you have worked with the team every step of the way to design the agenda. You might be thinking this should not be happening, wondering why it is, and asking yourself “Now what?”
You have three choices:
Keep pushing the team to follow the existing agenda
Try to accommodate the changes being raised in real time working them in where you think they will work best
Take a Process Break
I suggest you take a Process Break. That is, stop action and work with the team collaboratively to reset its expectations for next steps. What would that look like?
Consider the following seven steps:
1) Introduce a pause into the meeting and bring the group’s awareness to what is happening in the moment.
With this action, you are moving the group from talking about the topic(s) itself and focusing on the process by which you are talking about them – something called process observation. You are bringing something that is being experienced by all, yet unacknowledged, into the conversation.
2) Share what you are experiencing in the moment, element by element and check in with the group.
Sharing what you think is happening with the group enables them to provide some input and feedback about what they are experiencing. There may be some things people are viewing differently, and so this is way to make sure you are all on the same page.
3) Explain what is leading you to stop the meeting and check in on these observations.
This enables you to be explicit about what you are thinking, which is that the agenda is no longer being followed.
4) Follow with your proposal about what to do next.
Instead of asking the group what they want to do, consider putting forward a proposal for them to react to. It can be an easier starting point for the group to react to something than to generate something new. (I had a boss tell me once, don’t give me a blank piece of paper, give me something to react to.)
5) Prepare to revise the agenda in real-time with the group.
This is the time to put in place the things the group would like to accomplish by the end of the meeting and what can be left for next time. You can share the items that have not been addressed on the agenda and those that have been raised during the meeting.
6) Build the list and then prioritize.
Ask people what is missing, what needs to be added, what is most pressing, and in what order to discuss the items.
7) Put the new collaboratively designed agenda into place and re-start the meeting.
Now you can return to the topic(s) at hand. You have taken a process break and are ready to dive back into the work.
I have both led and facilitated many meetings and retreats where the agenda changed in the middle. I have come to appreciate that when I have planned very well, have a strong agenda and outline, am clear on the desired outcomes, and am flexible with what happens when we all convene, no matter what curve balls are thrown, it can be managed in the moment. I once had someone ask me if it ever bothered me that the group I was working with never followed a single agenda I put forward. I just smiled.
Putting the Steps into Practice
Here is an example of what taking a Process Break could sound like, given the scenario at the start of this piece. Step-by-step.
– L. Michelle Bennett
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