You Want a Meeting for What‽

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Clock over door to Honby library, Liverpool central library Picton reading rooms ℅ alamy.com

Clock over door to Honby library, Liverpool central library Picton reading rooms ℅ alamy.com

How’s zooming going? It’s fascinating how pre-COVID, so many shunned virtual meetings and now we’re over-meeting virtually because it’s ‘easy’ which has led to even more meetings! So, let me share a client’s habit for any and all of their meetings. It’s made a big difference ~ PPO (not PPP or PPE).

PPO is Purpose, Process and Outcome.  When you want a meeting, clearly state the Purpose, the Process to be used and the desired Outcome.  Here are examples from 2 recent client meetings:

Prioritize the top tactics for a key strategy:

  • Purpose: Decide the top 2 tactics to be executed by 7/1/2021 for Strategy 1;

  • Process: Take our current list of the top 6 tactics and prioritize those to the top 2 that have to be done immediately and why;

  • Outcome: The plan for the 2 top tactics including each tactic’s champion, definition of ‘done’, due/done date, metrics, 90-day action plan of who is doing what when to reach the 7/1/2021 deadline and the tracking/monitoring schedule.

 Finalize who will be accepted to a leadership program:

  • Purpose: Select the 5 people for the 2021-2022 leadership program;

  • Process: Applying the program’s criteria along with each applicants’ career plans, prioritize the list of applicants to the 5 we will accept;

  • Outcome: Final 5 identified with personalization verbiage of acceptance letter for each one, to be copied to their manager, and personalized letter of rejection to the rest to be sent by 2/25/2021.

This seems like a no-brainer, something we read in all the ‘effective meeting’ manuals, right‽ So, given our level of zoom fatigue, why not try it? Creating a PPO forces us to see if we really need a meeting, who really has to be there, and what we have to get done. It shouldn’t (ideally) take a lot of time to create the PPO.  And, it provides focus, choice and clarity – something we can all use these days! Try it this week!