As businesses grow, so do their meetings, both on-site and off-site. “Every organization feels meeting pains,” states Sheila Kappeler-Finn, a philanthropy consultant at Duende Consulting, LLC. In a LinkedIn post, Kappeler-Finn identifies the most common meeting traps as sprawl, stalemate and disengagement, adding that the reason for all three can often be traced to failure to match the meeting structure to the organization’s size. “Organizations outgrow their meetings as they scale. When that happens, it’s time to right-size them,” she says.
There are no hard and fast rules for determining who needs to be at a meeting, but in principle, states an article in Harvard Business Review, a small meeting is best to actually decide or accomplish something; A medium-sized meeting is ideal for brainstorming, and you can go large for communicating and rallying.
Some people use what’s known as the 8-18-1800 rule as a rough guideline:
- If you have to solve a problem or make a decision, invite no more than eight people. If you have more participants, you may receive so much conflicting input that it’s difficult to deal with the problem or make the decision at hand.
- If you want to brainstorm, you can go as high as 18 people.
- If the purpose of the meeting is for you to provide updates, invite however many people need to receive the updates. However, if everyone attending the meeting will be providing updates, limit the number of participants to no more than 18.
- If the purpose of the meeting is for you to rally the troops, go for 1,800 — or more!
When small organizations scale
In small and medium-sized businesses — say five to 50 people — there is a lot of flexibility to exchange ideas, both in formal meetings and less formal conversations that can actually be extensions of meetings. “Close contact enables group think, minimal bureaucracy and the ability to move quickly. Working in this environment, people often feel a strong sense of camaraderie and a low burden of structure,” says Kappeler-Finn.
When small organizations grow, meetings can start to feel sprawling, disorganized and ineffective. In attempt to avoid creating silos, a growing organization may cling to all-staff meetings too long.
It may be easy to default to inviting a crowd of people to a meeting, “but for a meeting to be useful, you have to have the right people — and only the right people — in the room,” the Harvard Business Review article states. The attendee list should match the goals of the meeting.
“When your organization passes the 20-employee mark, there will be increased team segmentation and stratified hierarchies: operations, sales, creative, development, leadership. These groups will have their own goals, concerns and challenges and should make time for their own collaborative needs through team meetings or periodic workshops,” says Kappeler-Finn. All-staff meetings should be reserved for these objectives:
- Revealing new information to everyone in the organization
- Celebrating wins and sharing lessons learned
- Communicating leadership messages and sponsored projects
Include new employees
Don’t be so aggressive in right-sizing meetings that you exclude new employees from too many gatherings, warns Kappeler-Finn. In fact, she urges small and mid-sized companies to aggressively include new hires in meetings.
“New employees entering an organization with an established history of intimacy and group think often have a difficult time integrating culturally.
One of the best ways to bring new hires into the fold is to immediately engage them by leveraging their knowledge and empowering them to lead meeting processes.”
You can engage new team members in meetings by soliciting their input or asking them to lead a discussion about insights he or she brings from previous work experience that may help the company.
“As you plan your attendee list, consider who will help you to accomplish your meeting’s goal and those who will be most affected by its outcome. Most likely this is a combination of people who will offer a variety of perspectives.” If you decide not to invite individuals who may be affected by a meeting’s outcome, be sure to communicate the substance of the meeting to them afterward.
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