Lots of meetings have tables of actions which are never completed. "No progress", "No update", "No Change" we hear. Fix all that with these three tips.
What, by who, by when - the catch-cry for pages full of actions that are generated in meetings, and then reviewed at the start of every meeting and the due dates simply pushed out with an annotation - "no progress" or "not yet complete".
Allocating actions to people is a great way for manager's to feel that decisions are being made and work is getting done. But if those actions are not getting completed, then nothing is being achieved at all. We suggest three easy ways to dramatically improve completion of assigned actions.
We've spoken before about the difference between a choice and a decision - a choice is a selection from a group of alternative courses of action, everyone loves making choices, and some people think that's their job. But a decision has not been made effectively until the choice is backed by an action plan with tasks assigned to people with given deadlines.
A decision is made up of both a choice and a plan to implement it.
Remember - we don't get paid to talk and choose, that's the easy part. We get paid to decide and then plan for action.
Meeting Action Tables
So to make our decision effective, we allocated actions to people in a table of meeting notes that has the headings like - task, by who, by when, and status.
Then we arrive at our next meeting, review the action table, and amongst a few actions that have been completed, we hear these sort of comments:
"I didn't know I had that action"
"I wasn't at that meeting"
"Yep, going well, in progress"
"Not quite complete yet"
"Can we push that out a month"
"Will be done by the next meeting"
Everything but what we need to have a highly effective team - "yes, complete", and within the designated time frame.
Three Tips
So Mining Man is recommending three tips that we help our clients put in place to get more completions and less postponements:
1. Follow up with people on the status of their actions a few days before the meeting
. Most people will not review the last meeting minutes until they are in the actual meeting, and then it is too late to complete even very quick and easy actions that they were allocated. They also may not have read through the minutes and actions of a meeting that they weren't at and will not even be aware of actions allocated to them. And don't just send out the minutes again, they will remained unopened - either visit or phone each owner to run through their action, or cut and paste all their actions directly to the body of an email and ask for their response.
2. Avoid allocating actions to anyone who is not present at the meeting or who is not a regular attender.
If the action really does belong with someone outside the meeting team, assign an action to someone who is at the meeting to make sure that outside person is fully briefed on their responsibiliy. Then at follow up time, follow up both the action itself, and the task given to someone to make sure the action was passed on.
3. Remove actions from the list when they really belong on a different list or are not realistically ever going to be completed.
Wading through pages of actions that are not being advanced is a terrible way to start a meeting. If an action reaches its due date and is not complete, maybe it needs to be changed to something smaller and more achievable (see our SMART Goals post) - get a quick win in the area with a completed goal and then go on from there. Make sure the table only contains actions that are actually going to be completed - if the table is full of action from over a year ago, what motivation is there for a person to complete theirs. If they think they'll be the only one at the meeting who has not met their deadline, there will certainly be a lot more motivation to get the task done.
The table of actions itself will not hold anyone to account. It is still the manager or meeting leader's job to get around and find out before the meeting how people are going with completion. Too many excuses are available when the person is on the spot in the meeting.
So remind everyone of their actions a few days before the meeting, make sure those who weren't there when they were allocated an action are aware (and someone is accountable to make them aware), and remove tasks that are never going to get done to make the action table tool efficient and effective.
And I expect this all to be done by the next meeting.... ;-)
- Jamie Ross
Mining Man - Great Ideas for Leaders in the Mining Industry