Claire Hughes Johnson: preference

Transcript context

…Next question, what are one to two, or maybe three things that people can do to run more effective meetings? I say give this masterclass on running more effective meetings. And just to boil down, what are a couple things people could probably change? I do have a video on YouTube about running an effective meeting, but I think the number one thing is the work of a meeting is not calling the meeting. Calling a meeting is easy. In fact, that is a problem. The barrier is very low, and it should be higher. What you really want to know... People need to know why are we meeting, and what is the point, what's the objective of this meeting? Is it to make a decision? Is it to share information? Who needs to be here? One of my favorite things to say is make the thing that's implicit explicit. Too many meetings are implicitly about something and not explicit enough. And I'm like, "No, no, no. I want to know why I'm here. Are we making the decision? Who's making the decision? And how?" Even better, you say, "Does anyone not need to be here? Because we'll just send you a note afterwards about what happened? Right? Make it more efficient, but be really explicit about the point of the meeting, and really do some inquiry on whether it's important, whether it's needed. Maybe a final question is around decision making. So product managers who are, a lot of the audience of this podcast, have to, one, make a lot of decisions, get people to alignment, but they also don't classically have authority over anyone. What advice do you have for aligning and decision making?…

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