Level up your meetings
Engaging stakeholders at the right level is one of the most important skills to learn and master to get the most out of the finite time we all have on our projects. It’s also one of those things that is an easy concept to grasp but a challenging feat to continuously accomplish.
Let’s start with a definition. Who and what are stakeholders? According to the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge Seventh Edition (PMBOK) a stakeholder is: ’An individual, group, or organization that may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project, program, or portfolio.’
We have all been in meetings before where you asked questions like:
- “Why am I here?’
- ‘This is such a waste of my time’
- ‘Who is running this meeting?’
- ‘Did this meeting even have an agenda?’
- ‘What is the meaning of life?’
… Okay I made that last one up but I am sure if you are reading this as a member of a project team before you may have at one point been thinking about online shopping or maybe even actually online shopping while sitting on an unstructured, boring waste-of-your-time MS Teams or Zoom call.. Am I right?
So one technique to adopt on projects that I have used in the past is defining the level of engagement required for your meetings. (I will write a separate blog post about how to structure and run effective meetings but this is a good starter for you to use immediately if you like😁)
By defining the level of engagement required for each meeting helps you and your project team to better assess who is required to attend and what level of detail will be discussed. It is a quick way to identify what type of meeting you and your team will be attending.
I have used a level system in the past which has its roots in gaming. So what are these meeting ‘levels’?
Level 1 Meeting: High level meeting, task oriented. Non-technical discussion. These are things like, standups, project meetings, schedule discussions.
Level 2 Meeting: Semi-technical meeting. A meeting about a specific topic or issue generally with follow up or action items. These are things like, meetings around key decision points, milestone meetings, Stage Gate reviews.
Level 3 Meeting: Technical meeting or workshop. A workshop to discuss in depth around a technical aspect of the project with Subject Matter Experts.
I am a strong believer that every meeting no matter how short should have at the least a meeting agenda. The above levels are to supplement your meetings to add structure and help your team at a glance to know what to mentally prepare for your sessions.
Happy engaging!