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iQuestions Faculty, Barbara Glanz 
 
 
Question: 
 
How can I make my meetings more productive? 
 
Answer: 
 
Most employees, when asked what they dislike about their job, will tell 
you its meetings. One of the ways you can make your meetings more 
productive is to make them more fun. So in every meeting do 
something a little bit different.  
 
You might have a meeting where everybody stands up. You might 
have one where everybody sits on the floor. You might have one 
where you take all the furniture out of the room and they have to 
decide what to do, how they’re going to function. That’s one way to do 
something differently each time. Perhaps bring a treat—a special treat. 
Just do something creative. 
 
Secondly, most of the meetings that I go to or hear people talk about 
are about what’s going wrong, instead of what’s going right.  
 
One of the things that I ask my audiences to do is to begin every 
meeting they go to with three minutes of good news.  
 
Just ask anybody in the room to share any good thing that’s happened 
in their family, in their community, on the job, in the world. Most 
meetings are about what’s going wrong, so starting out with what’s 
going right is going to make a real difference. 
 
My clients all over the world are starting meetings out with three 
minutes of good news and they’re telling me they’re more productive, 
 
 
they’re shorter, and people are coming on time because they don’t 
want to miss the three minutes of good news. The most exciting thing 
is they’re telling me they have a hard time stopping it at three 
minutes, because once people start sharing good things, they want to 
share more and more.  
 
We’re so focused in our world on what’s going wrong, instead of what’s 
going right. 
 
The other thing that I would suggest to you is to have some assigned 
jobs in the meeting. Of course, you always want a scribe to take notes, 
but you also need to have a timekeeper.  
 
Do a pre-agenda, so that people know before they come to the 
meeting how much time you’re going to spend on which topics. Then 
have a timekeeper. He or she is going to let you know when you’re 
down to two or three minutes, and when the time is up you end that 
discussion so that people get used to following the timekeeper.  
 
You also want to have a process checker. This person is sort of like the 
coach, the one on the sidelines, who when somebody gets off the topic 
tells them—stops them, stops the meeting, does a timeout—and says: 
“Let’s get back on topic again.” 
 
These roles will keep you much more focused in a productive way. If 
you’re doing something fun and starting with three minutes of good 
news, you’re going to have very successful, shorter, and much more 
productive meetings. 
Glanz -2- 
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