Departmental meetings are usually necessary, but they do not have to be a chore. Julia Bindman helped one litigation department redesign its team get-togethers to make the best use of fee-earners' time


Bill Perry, head of the litigation and dispute resolution service at top-50 London firm Charles Russell, and Maria Kell, the team's practice support lawyer, homed in very quickly on the problem with their monthly departmental meeting. 'It's boring,' they said.



Short phone interviews with a handful of the 85 members of the service who are supposed to attend the meeting confirmed this.



Everyone understood that the meeting had two goals: firstly, to bring together a large, diverse group of lawyers and paralegals, divided across both business groups and offices; secondly, to share current awareness and 'know-how'.



The problem was that, with such a large number of people involved, the meeting was invariably a dull hour spent sitting in a chair and listening. Bill would start off by speaking about various departmental housekeeping matters, then Maria would go through a bundle of know-how documents.



Sitting and listening is not intrinsically boring - everyone liked the chance to see Bill, who might otherwise not cross their paths each month, and who was credited with infusing routine material with charm and charisma. On the know-how front, people were very appreciative. However, as one lawyer put it, 'there are lots of specialist areas, but I'm only interested in mine'. And, with so many areas, inevitably 'the meeting drags on'.



Could I, they asked, find a way to make it more interactive?



People attend meetings - and stay interested once they are there - for two reasons. The most common is that they see the meeting as essential to carrying out their responsibilities right now, or in the foreseeable future. The other is that the meeting is attractive, with something happening there that engages their interest.



In the case of the service's meeting, the attendees endorsed the goals of the meeting, but it was not quite working for them. All of the information was available through other sources. Nor was it sufficiently interesting for a whole hour to pass without a twitch.



Fortunately, the cures were straightforward. To the surprise of both the hosts and the participants, greater interactivity was not one of them. Any interactivity beyond a basic question and answer format is just not viable with a group larger than ten.



The solution for this meeting was to understand that while more efficient mechanisms existed for distributing the information, the meeting was the simplest way to promote the unity of the group and that this goal should be the focus. Further, we had to accept that a meeting with this goal would never be essential to anyone, and to aim instead at making it attractive.



The most important step was to cut the agenda to 30 minutes. There is nothing less attractive than being trapped when you have more pressing things to do.



Those agenda items that could be carried out by email were removed, unless they had a clear 'people' dimension, which is always attractive. It is, for example, important for the boss to announce personnel moves as a sign of respect for people in the team.



A five-minute slot was incorporated each month for a report from someone on their own case, to recognise success. Changing the face at the podium for a few minutes also added to the variety.



Only those know-how items in the bundle that were of relevance to at least three-quarters of the group were covered in the meeting, and the rest were devolved.



The staging of the meeting was also shifted, to reflect the reality that it was a presentation, not a discussion. An auditorium-style layout for the chairs made this point and allowed the speaker to look at the audience present without turning away from the video-conference camera.



And then there were the refreshments for a lunchtime. Free sandwiches or biscuits that are not as nice as those available locally for a small sum are not a draw for lawyers. Bill and Maria agreed to secure a budget to provide decent sandwiches and hot snacks - to great effect.



But the sandwiches (or tea and coffee, biscuits and fruit for meetings outside lunchtime) are not just frivolous. With the seats in rows, the sandwiches were now on a table at the side, and at the end of the meeting everyone who was not in a rush returned to the table for a second helping, providing an informal opportunity for people to approach each other, or Bill and Maria.



The final verdict? I phoned around for comments, and the message was clear: 'It's better than the old meeting - more targeted. A shorter meeting and better food means more people will turn up.'



Top tips

l Identify your meeting's goals - can any or all of them be delivered better another way, for example, by email or by holding smaller meetings?

l Send an invitation and supply an agenda just as you would for any other meeting.

l Make the meeting brief and varied - do not waste energy trying to make a large meeting interactive, and remember that a lengthy monologue is just as boring to an audience of five as it is to an audience of 50.

l With fewer than ten people, make it essential - use it to solve real problems, identify resources and distribute work-load, and make it comfortable for people to speak up.

l For a larger meeting, add what you can to make it attractive - recognise achievements, let people find out about each other, and allow access to senior people.

l Finally, make sure there are good-quality refreshments.



Julia Bindman is a strategy consultant specialising in the design and delivery of meetings and workshops for professionals. Email: juliabindman@jbsp.co.uk