Kill the Boring Status Meeting (and Actually Get Stuff Done!)

Every professional services gig you do, one meeting consistently happens in the same way, adds little value and is often flat-out document reading. 

The weekly status report meeting.

This Status Meeting...

Pause for Project Manager PTSD. Innocuous as it is, typically it's regurgitating the actual status report (the one that people don’t always read). And it’s just accepted and it happens all the time, all over again, every project.

It shouldn’t.

Each seat in the meeting costs the project money, and this may well be the only weekly time people get to step back and digest everything that’s happening. That’s not the real crime here. If used properly, this meeting provides a significant amount of alignment and helpful actions, much more than reading stats.

How can we improve the weekly meeting and get max value?

1. The status report is everyone’s pre-read

Send this at least 1 day before you even try this meeting. Give the team a chance to digest and form questions. Everybody must be on the same page when at the start of this meeting. Make it very clear to pre-read, you don’t want to waste other people’s time (and yours) explaining items.

1. Reformat your meeting to allow for more collaborative involvement

Using the power of diverse thought to bubble up items the collective never knew was a pressing problem with a 5 minute brainstorm by polling the team on what’s on their minds. Spending this short amount of time can uncover risks and issues, maybe actions that aren’t working. It should be a safe space to bring items up but it’s not a place to push back, but bubble up. Use a collaborative space tool to help people participating.

1. Workshop your risk register into actions

Everyone’s read the risks from the status report (pre-read right?), use this as a chance to look at the top ranking risks without mitigation actions and discuss. Get actions out of this part of the meeting, it helps drive you forward. Hot tip; set the expectations that this is not solving everything, it’s merely accelerating actions in a collaborative method.

1. Keep Iterating

Meeting formats can become stale if you’re not talking to the attendees to get feedback. You want to know what’s working and use it to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to try something new, the worst thing that can happen is someone tells you they don’t like it. The best thing is that you get better buy-in and collaboration.

1. Get help to audit your meeting effectiveness

Use an external party or collaboration consultant to understand why these status meetings aren’t hitting the mark. Feedback is amazing, but impartial advice is invaluable to help you.

Ultimately you’re in charge of the weekly status meeting, and if you’re finding engagement is low (including you), do something healthy about it.