PM ADVISORY:

Four Steps to Conquer Lousy Project Meetings

By Jeff Oltmann, PMP
Portland, Oregon, USA

Death By Meeting

“Want to avoid work? Call a meeting!” I’ve seen that cynical comment on office posters. While I sympathize with it, I don’t agree. Far from sapping productivity, a well-run meeting is often the most effective way to get work done. “Much teamwork is accomplished in meetings. We gather and distribute information, coordinate activities, uncover new problems, assign tasks, and make decisions.” (Verzuh, p. 274)

The catch is leading a well-run meeting. Meetings are critical for communication on projects, so I’m mystified by how many of them are poorly run, often by project managers, the very people who should excel at effective meetings. NASA program manager James T. Brown complains, “You would be hard pressed to identify a bigger consumer or waster of organizational resources than meetings. The fact is that a lot of meetings are unnecessary, and often the necessary meetings are poorly run.” (Brown, p. 153)

No Excuse

Running a good meeting is not difficult if you invest in a bit of preparation and some simple facilitation skills. Meetings are a large part of our work life. Really, there is no excuse for running bad meetings.

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About the Author Jeff Oltmann, PMP Author Jeff Oltmann is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services, LLC in Portland, Oregon (www.spspro.com). He is also on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. His specialties include strategy deployment, operational excellence, and project portfolio management. Jeff is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience managing successful technology programs. He ran the Program Management Office (PMO) and a $60M project portfolio for IBM’s xSeries development facility in Oregon. Jeff’s hands-on program management experience includes program budgets over $100M and worldwide cross-functional teams of over 100 members. Jeff welcomes your questions and ideas. You can contact him at jeff@spspro.com or read previous articles at www.spspro.com/resources.htm.