Three frameworks to get better outcomes from your business meetings

Are you getting the most out of your business meetings? Do you spend hours in meetings, but with little or almost nothing to show for this in terms of results or improved decision-making? Looking for ways to bring more structure and trackable results from meetings? The three frameworks below are a starting point in the journey to having better business meetings. You can use them to get more definition around the intent and expectations and structure the content of the meetings for ease of reference and context.

1. The 4 I’s – define the why of the meeting.

Business meetings are always helpful when the participants know the reason the meeting was convened in the first place. Every business meeting usually is fulfilling one or more of the four I’s:

Share Information

Generate Ideas

Derive Insights

Initiate plans

Use the 4 I’s before each meeting to establish what the meeting’s intent is, and after the meeting to confirm if the intent was accomplished.

2. The PATIO – define the what of the meeting.

This framework is a helpful add-on shared alongside the request to convene the business meeting to ensure participants understand what is required of them and others, and are well prepared.

Essentially, PATIO stands for:

To determine the PATIO of each meeting, think of the answers to the following questions:

What is the Purpose of the meeting? To align? To kickstart? To co-create? To decide? What needs to be done and completed for the meeting to be termed successful?

What is Agenda (what will step 1 or discussion point 1 be? Discussion point 2? 3? Etc. Which ones are for information? Which for discussion? And which for decision?

Timing: how long will we need this meeting to last for? Always recommended to keep meetings below one hour so that participants are encouraged to be concise

Information: pre-reads, meeting venue directions, prep work, presession tasks, videoconferencing tool instructions. Essentially information needed by participants before joining

Outcome: what will a successful meeting look like? What decisions need to be made and what proportion of consensus/alignment needs to be reached? What level of understanding needs to be established?

IDART – summarize the output from the meeting.

IDART provides a canvas for reflecting the range of discussions, decisions, and inspired actions from the meeting. Regular meeting minutes tend to take a prose-form which ends up with multiple pages of meeting dialogue and the actionable details get lost in the pages of prose. Also, regular meeting action points can become isolated from the actual meeting agenda when over time the originating idea behind them gets lost with passing memory. IDART makes sure meetings lead to follow-up, trackable actions and are more effective. IDART stands for:

Ideas/Initiative – the meeting topic area that needs to be deliberated, discussed and decided on as part of the objectives of the meeting. It can be a new topic area (Idea) or an existing area (Initiative)

Decision – the direction agreed on to implement the idea or initiative. There can be multiple decisions for each idea/initiative

Action – the specific task to be done to drive the agreed-on decision. There can be multiple actions agreed on for each decision

Responsible – the person tasked with ensuring the action gets executed

Timeline – the due date for the action

The IDART canvas is usually reflected on a table – which can be in a spreadsheet or regular note-taking app, and is filled during the meeting by the designated meeting note-taker and circulated to all attendees afterwards.