Meetings. A Must Read...

I work at a job that requires at least 10 years of experience. Phone conferences and web conferences are the norm in the type of work that I do; I must participate in 10 of them a month at the least. So, doing the math, in my 10+ years of experience I’ve participated in at least 1200 of these things.

There is etiquette involved:
1. Make sure you need to be there and that you understand the meeting objective
2. Make sure you have the proper software for the web meeting before the meeting begins. Ask to do a trial run the day before if necessary
3. Print out all materials ahead of time in case of a hardware failure
4. Make sure the meeting starts on time (or that you aren’t the cause of a delay)
5. Put your phone on mute if you are not actively speaking
6. Do not interrupt the person speaking
7. Follow the agenda
8. If you have a comment about something that is not on the agenda, DON’T BRING IT UP. Make a note to yourself to follow-up after the conference.
9. If you have a question about something that is not on the agenda, see above.
10. If you are having a discussion about something on the agenda and the natural course of the conversation takes you off the agenda topic, be polite and say “Let’s discuss this further after the meeting” Then make a note and follow-up after the conference
11. Keep it short and to the point if you have something to contribute; this is not your opportunity to prove you know it all or to impress the other participants
12. Make sure the meeting ends on time

Today I had to participate in a conference with about 50 other people that are in similar jobs to mine that require the same amount of experience. We were there to get trained on how to enter data into a new system. This is pretty normal stuff so I was absolutely speechless at the number of rules broken.

I logged in 10 minutes prior to the meeting. I had all of my equipment set-up, my print-outs arranged, and I went and got myself a soda and some chips to keep me occupied for the duration. I was set, settled and ready promptly at the meeting start time. At that point, I got to listen to 15+ minutes of people trying to download the meeting software and asking for passwords. It was incredibly painful.

Finally, the meeting organizer noted the time and started the meeting. He apologized to those folks that couldn’t login and suggested that they have their printed papers in front of them. That was followed by at least 5 minutes of people asking what papers they should have (if they didn’t know, why were they at the meeting in the first place?), still asking login questions, and just generally not focusing on the task at hand.

Then the meeting began. It started out wonderfully: I was getting what I needed to know, I was taking notes, and I was finally feeling like I wasn’t wasting my time. That lasted for all of 5 minutes and then the questions began… “Well, when we did this with the old system, we used file XXX. Why do we have to use file YYY now?”
And the meeting maker made a fatal mistake… he not only answered the question: “Because file XXX doesn’t have the required information,” he felt the need to explain the entire history of the generation of the new system and the requirements for new files. I flipped back to my meeting materials and went through them again. The history of the world was definitely NOT on the agenda!

These types of left-field questions came in for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. The meeting maker fielded them all with long-winded discussion. My eyes glazed over. The caffeine in my can of Mountain Dew was not cutting it so I ducked out for a candy bar and another can. I played solitaire on my iPod. I doodled. I used the phone in the next cube to call my mother. And right before I keeled over with my forehead hitting the keyboard, the mother of all meeting etiquette breaches happened…

We were suddenly assaulted by a barrage of light rock: Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles, Madonna, and some artists I didn’t recognize. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I know it put me over the edge. I breached etiquette: I took the phone off mute, interrupted the speaker and burst forth with an item NOT on the agenda: “Turn the bloody radio off!!!”

There was silence from the participants as Bruce continued to reminisce about his Glory Days. Then someone else joined in with, “Please, whoever is listening to the radio, put your microphone on mute.” It didn’t stop. Then I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I realized what was going on: someone had put us on hold and we were listening to hold music! They couldn’t hear us to know what they had done.

Please, explain to me how you work somewhere for 10 years and not remember that your phone system plays music when you put someone on hold??

The meeting organizer came to the same conclusion and noted it to the rest of the participants. Determined to get through the agenda, he decided to continue on and try to talk over the music. For the remaining 20 minutes of our meeting we had loud background music. It was painful, it was difficult, but I held on through. I made about 5 minutes more worth of useful notes and then I made sure that the one etiquette item within my control was followed: I hung up on the meeting promptly at the meeting end time.

I was frazzled, I was angry, and I was powerless to right the long list of wrongs that had been perpetrated in that meeting; those wrongs that had wasted almost 2 hours of my life - 2 hours I will never get back. So in the hopes that hours of someone else’s life aren’t wasted, I post this story here and I ask you to go through the meeting rules of etiquette anytime you have a phone or web conference. Pretty please??