Meetings are forcing functions

A recurring meeting serves as a powerful forcing function for long-running projects.

Many organizations face a common challenge: a complex project that requires effort and perspectives from multiple people, moves through definition and execution phases, and unfolds over weeks, months, or years. But one where the tasks to accomplish the project are not anyone’s full-time job.

Everyone has other obligations, fires to put out, and emails to answer. It’s easy for long-term strategic, high-impact work to sink to the bottom of everyone’s todo list.

One effective solution is to schedule a standing meeting. Whether in person or video, it doesn’t matter. The key to making progress is maintaining an agenda and, critically, opening each meeting by reviewing the to-dos from the previous one. This creates pressure on everyone to make progress. When people know they’ll be asked “what’s the status of X that we talked about last wee?” at an upcoming meeting, it is easier, though not easy, to carve out time for that work amid the daily chaos.

This approach works across organizational boundaries too. If you’re a consulting firm, a regular cadence of meetings with your client is especially valuable. You’re  motivated to deliver., but people on the client’s team may be less so. A meeting where you consistently show progress while they haven’t made any creates gentle but real accountability.

If you’re managing a large, complex, multi-person effort, consider the standing meeting. As far as schedule, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly all have worked for me in the past. Pick whatever fits the urgency.

Use a meeting as a forcing function to ensure people actually make time to move the project forward.