Project Success: Start Out Meetings With Thanks


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Project Success: Start Out Meetings With Thanks by Tim Sanders

November 21, 2012

A great book is the result of an effective project, which requires leadership on the author's part. 

At Net Minds, our authors work in tandem with their publishing teams: Editors, Designers, Marketers and Publicists.  Frequently, they'll work collectively, either via chat, phone or in person.  Each meeting is important, as it hopefully moves the project along and maintains enthusiasm in everyone involved.  Many times, though, it's easy for a project to go south, usually because it's not focused on the right things.  That usually happens because a meeting starts out poorly, then ends badly.

As it's the eve of Thanksgiving, I'm reminded of a key project success technique: Start out with what's going right and then give appreciation.  This was a project management practice of mine at Yahoo, and currently with our team at Net Minds.  Between meetings, there is usually a great deal of work involved, including thoughtful innovations.  When a project is facing hurdles or running behind, it's easy for the project manager to focus the meeting on what's going wrong - often demoralizing the team.  Here's the reality: Most of our goals and deadlines are made up, estimates plucked out of the air for the sake of being metrics driven.

When a meeting starts out with the negatives, it's easy for it to disintegrate into the blame game and an excuse festival.  In my experience, the first ten minutes of a meeting sets its tone, usually defining the level of collective emotional intelligence in the room.  In many cases, the reason the project isn't going smoothly is because of miscommunications, poor internal relations or a lack of motivation.  Nothing helps solve those issues more than appreciation for progress and efforts.  The key is to think of your meeting in stages: Progress, Status, Solutions, Next Steps. 

Before you conduct your next meeting, create a list of progress points for the project. What's been completed, improved or thought through?  Then, identify the team members responsible for it, and itemize their contributions.  Start out the meeting with that report, giving thanks for efforts, innovations and tenacity.  (Hint: If there's no progress or no one to be thankful for, it should be a very short meeting!) This starts the meeting out with what the project has, not what it lacks.  Then identify the status of the project, given the goals minus progress.  If there's a delta, discuss what next steps need to take place, then gather up the commitments and adjourn.  Follow this process each meeting and you'll soon see more progress, as people respond well to being recognized for their efforts.

You'll also find that by starting out with progress + kudos, your team has more resiliancy during the tougher part of the meeting where shortfalls are discussed and project problems identified.  It will be easier to objectify the #fails and personalize our commitments to right them.  The key to great projects is to maintain a sense of progress, especially when there's an element of speculation involved.  You'll maintain progress, by putting it at the top of the agenda, and not burying it with a hackneyed "burning platform" sermon to lead your next meeting.

Tim Sanders

About Tim Sanders

Tim is a bestselling author and former Yahoo! executive with a mission to disrupt the traditional publishing and self-publishing industries and share knowledge with authors looking to publish and market high-quality books.

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