Get the Right People to Your Meeting

The first step to creating an effective meeting is creating an agenda. Doing this thoughtful prep work will ensure that you know what you want the outcome of the meeting to be. Once you know the desired result, you can decide who needs to be at the meeting to get there.

Jeff Bezos has said that if you have a meeting where two pizzas can't feed all the participants, you have too many people. This is a good beginner's rule of thumb, but let's dive a bit deeper because sometimes you will need more people, other times, it will be fewer people.

A good guideline that Harvard Business Review recommends is using the 8-18(2)-1800 rule:

--If you are making a decision, invite no more than 8 people. If you have more, you may have too much conflicting information and inputs that a decision will be impossible to make.

--If you are brainstorming, you can go as high as 18.

--If you are giving updates and everyone is expected to update their portion of work, stay at or below 18. Also, ask yourself if a meeting is required just for updates--is it possible for this to be an email where the leader composes where everything is at the current moment?

--If the purpose is to rally the troops, 1,800 (or more) is perfect.

But the most critical aspect of running a successful meeting is ensuring the right people are there.

When you are deciding who the right people to attend the meeting are, you can ask yourself three questions:

--Who are the decision-makers for the issues set in the agenda?

--Who has the knowledge and background on the issues?

--Who is going to have to do the follow through on any decisions made?

If you look at a person and answer yes to all three, they definitely need to be in attendance. If you look at another person and you answer yes to only one or two, take a moment to assess if they really should be in attendance or not.

Don't fall into the trap of inviting people just because you feel like they should be invited. This often happens when we feel the need to invite managers and bosses based solely on their position. Usually, a comprehensive meeting summary will serve them as well as actually being in attendance.

On the same note, be ok if someone feels they don't need to be in attendance (if you think they need to be, you should be able to give a reason why).

Meeting rules are not written in stone, they are a guideline to help us be more thoughtful in what we hope to accomplish. Of course, you are going to have meetings with more or less than 8 or 18 people, but you should always be mindful of who is being asked to be there.