Meeting Types: Information vs. Solution

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>> Hi. I'm Edward Muzio, CEO of Group Harmonics. And I'm gonna tell you about two meeting types, information and solution. Whenever we put a group of human beings in a room together, we call it a meeting. Most of us don't realize there are actually two separate types of meetings we can have, and when we get them mixed up or confused, it's a recipe for disaster and wasted time. The first type of meeting is the information meeting. This is about status, and about updating status, and it happens on a regular basis. Think of things like quarterly update meetings, weekly project meetings, bi-monthly staff meetings. In these meetings the communication looks something like this. One person talks, and other people listen. Maybe they take turns, but status is being communicated, and so people are using these regular meetings to reinforce the organizational structure. As a result, it doesn't matter if you have two people, ten people, a hundred people, whatever, because one person's talking at a time. These can be large meetings. What you want to see in these meetings is two things. You want to see brevity of reporting, you want quick reports that get to the point and get on with it. Visuals are helpful in this, a picture is worth a thousand words, show me the status and move on. What you don't want to see is inconsistency. You don't want to have two staff meetings one week, and then miss three weeks before the next one. And you don't want people withholding information for political reasons. You want to get the information moving, get the status updates out. The second type of meeting is called the solution meeting. Now this happens on an as needed or ad hoc basis. And it is about problem solving, or coming to some outcome. What you want to do in a meeting like this is pull a group of experts together to solve a problem. That means the communication pattern is a little different. Everyone's working together, so they're working, all of them, with each other. Now notice how much more complicated that is. You can't have a hundred people, or even twelve people in a meeting like this. You need about five to seven people. If you get much bigger than nine it's gonna be chaos. What else do you want to see in a meeting like this? You'd like to see good eye contact. You'd like for the people to be looking at each other, and interacting with each other actively. You want a good solving problem process. You want an agreement up front as to how the team is gonna work. What you don't want to see at a meeting like this, is you don't want to see anybody taking over, talking too much, asking too many questions. And you don't want to see anybody withdrawing, or hiding information. You've got a small number of experts, you want them to all contribute. Now in an ideal world we would keep these two meetings separate, and we would never mix them up. Separate rooms, separate times, separate groups. In real life with smaller groups, sometimes groups will do both things in the same meeting. That can be okay if you use a good agenda. If you're clear about what's the information part of the meeting, and what's the solution part of the meeting.

background music So the next time you're frustrated, sitting in a meeting that started out as a status update, but is going around in circles over a problem, ask yourself, is it an information meeting, or is it a solution meeting. What's it trying to be, and what does the agenda reflect? If they don't match up, stop and start over. It's the best way to avoid wasting your time.

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==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====