I’ve recently realized the habit of many professionals to reflect on the meeting. I rarely do so unfortunately, because I know at the back of the mind what went right and what went wrong, and what I need to modify. However, I do not spend enough time on analyzing the meeting in detail before moving onto the next big rock.
Meeting retrospectives consciously allow you to dissect the meeting (especially the important ones), learn from them and come up with strategies to improve them the next time around.
The three key pillars you need to ask are —
- What went good
- What went wrong (top problem statements you’ve identified)
- How can it be improved (3 to 5 things that can be improved)
At a recent presentation with my colleague in front of executives, we became mired with a host of issues. I began the meeting by providing some introductions, regaling the problem that we’ve identified, the user profiles / target market our initiative is targeted towards, the success metrics that we’re looking to achieve, our hypothesis and so on. Everything went smoothly until then. The next part was showcasing the designs or wireframes of the new product.
My laptop had died, and I couldn’t figure out where to charge it in the conference room. My colleague had her laptop working, however we didn’t have the appropriate dongles to connect her laptop to the screen. We tried to open the design link on the presenters’ laptop, however it asked for access to be displayed. At a dead-end, I quickly asked everyone to gather closer to the table and told them we were going to walk the audience through the designs from my colleague’s laptop. We gave the presentation this way amid a lot of curiosity and interest from the executives. They were gracious about the technical challenges we were facing and had no qualms about hovering closer to one laptop. We were definitely a bit fuddled with the entire experience, however felt the overall point of the presentation was delivered to the group.
However something did stay at the back of my mind. And I felt a retro was needed to help avoid this happening again in the future —
- Reading audience reactions and modifying your presentation or answers on the fly. Even though the initial presentation went well, I still received a lot of questions around the problem that we were trying to solve. My boss helped to articulate it better — the executives still don’t think from a user-first perspective. Hence when I talk to such a group, I should talk their language — revenue, bottomline, cross selling opportunities, expanding the brand equity and so on.
- Getting the basic tech figured out — scouting the meeting room beforehand or arriving early to the meeting and setting up your laptop. Understanding the choreography of who’s going to present, making sure your laptop is charged, have the necessary dongles to present on the screen and have a backup option should things go horribly wrong. I might be printing the presentation beforehand and provide it to the group or have a PDF backup option to show the design screens if possible.
In addition, getting feedback from the meeting members also helps. You can ask them on what can be improved to be more productive during such meetings.
Things go wrong in meetings all the time — no meeting is perfect. However having presence of mind, thinking on the spot, having backup options figured out and coming up with alternative solutions during the meeting are some of the ways you can smooth the process.
What are your horror stories of meetings gone wrong?
