Last October, I helped the Agile Alliance Board of Directors with their quarterly meeting. They asked me to write up one of the ways we worked with some difficulties that came up.
Meetings
Getting Aligned Through Shared Understanding
“We want to know how aligned people are around the new product development strategy. How can we do that?”
A group of senior leaders at a software company asked me this question as I was helping them to prepare for their annual kickoff meeting. They’d just completed a challenging year of development on a new product initiative. While it had generated some impressive results, they recognized that they needed to approach the following year differently. They were bringing the core team of twenty-five or so key contributors – usually distributed across the United States – together for several days to roll out their plans for the new year. They’d brought me in to help plan and facilitate the event. I knew what I needed to do: help them create a shared understanding of the new strategy.
Start With a Clear Purpose
Your meeting should have a purpose, and everyone in the meeting should agree on what it is.
This is the most common advice that I give people when they ask how to make their meetings more effective. It’s also one of the most powerful.