Best Practices for Effective Meetings
Meetings are an integral part of a product manager's responsibilities. As PMs, our calendars fill up quickly with internal syncs, cross-functional collaborations, and customer conversations. While meetings often feel like an operational burden that distracts us from "real work," we can transform meetings into engines of productivity and catalysts for innovation if we approach them thoughtfully.
In my experience coaching thousands of product managers, I've identified best practices that enhance meeting effectiveness. By optimizing the before, during, and after phases of each meeting, you drive clarity, accountability, and momentum within your teams!
When to Have a Meeting (and When Not To)
Before diving into meeting best practices, it's crucial to evaluate whether a meeting is truly necessary. Meetings are expensive in terms of collective team bandwidth, so avoid the temptation to schedule them reflexively.
Consider a meeting if:
You need to make a decision that requires real-time discussion and diverse perspectives
The topic is nuanced or emotionally charged, making it difficult to resolve asynchronously
You're kicking off a complex project and need to establish a shared vision
You're delivering a major update that benefits from interactive Q&A
On the flip side, you likely don't need a meeting if:
The purpose is purely informational and could be conveyed via email, Slack, or a recorded video
It's a status update that attendees could provide asynchronously in a project management tool
Only a subset of invitees are relevant to the topic, indicating a smaller meeting is appropriate
There isn't a clear decision to make or problem to solve collaboratively
When in doubt, challenge yourself to accomplish the meeting's objective through alternative means before committing to a synchronous discussion. Empowering your team to communicate and coordinate effectively outside of meetings is a hallmark of skillful product leadership.
Assuming that we’ve decided that a meeting is the best path forward, let’s now dive into some key best practices for running an effective meeting.
Best practices for meetings
Best Practice #1: Assign One Meeting Owner
Once you've determined that a meeting is valuable, start by designating a single owner for it, whether that owner is a product manager, a project manager, or a key stakeholder. Research shows that unclear or shared ownership leads to disorderly meetings with ambiguous objectives.
The meeting owner should:
Define the purpose and desired outcomes
Select appropriate attendees
Set the meeting length
Share relevant prep materials in advance
Structure the meeting format
Establish success criteria
By proactively shaping these elements, the owner creates focus and enables participants to contribute productively from the moment the meeting begins.
Best Practice #2: Create a Transparent Agenda
An agenda ensures alignment on the meeting's intent and direction. Consider what you aim to achieve from this meeting when factoring attendees' opportunity cost.
Ask yourself: Does this meeting create value greater than the productivity lost by participants stepping away from their regular workload? If not, reconsider whether it's necessary to have this meeting.
Effective meetings require clear objectives, such as:
Gathering cross-functional feedback
Responding to competitor actions
Brainstorming resourcing strategies
Building shared understanding of a customer journey
Then, once you have an objective defined, craft your agenda with three key components:
The Starting Point – What's the context coming into this meeting? Frame the initial state with data or background.
The End Point – What should we accomplish by meeting's end? State the decision, solution, or plan we'll converge on.
The Path to Get There - Which topics and discussions will enable us to navigate from start to finish?
Additionally, determine how decisions will be made - by consensus, vote, executive ruling, or some combination. Defining the decision-making approach prevents mismatched expectations during heated conversations.
With your agenda established, consider how you'll facilitate the discussion to reach your target outcome efficiently.
For brainstorming or ideation sessions, use silent idea generation to source diverse perspectives without groupthink. Have attendees write down their ideas individually first, then go around and share to spark further discussion.
When you need broad input, leverage breakout groups to engage attendees in smaller conversations before reconvening to share top insights with the broader group. This format encourages active participation and surfaces issues that individuals may hesitate to raise in front of the entire audience.
If debating between options, have team members advocate for each position, then rotate to generate counterarguments. This role reversal exercise promotes understanding alternative perspectives and mitigates entrenched positions.
For complex topics, integrate brief presentations to establish a common foundation, but constrain them to 10-15 minutes to sustain attention. Favor interaction over lecture whenever possible.
By matching your meeting format thoughtfully to your objectives, you create space for equitable contributions, stimulate creative problem-solving, and guide your team smoothly through challenging discussions.
Best Practice #3: Continuously Reorient to the Agenda
Once you've established an agenda, direct the team back to it gently but firmly. Distribute the agenda when sending calendar invites so attendees understand expectations and can prepare questions ahead of time.
Display the agenda visibly during the meeting and walk attendees through the outlined objectives to confirm preparedness. This structures the discussion and reminds participants to stay focused.
After concluding, recap the agenda to evaluate completeness. Did we address each item thoroughly en route to the desired outcome? If not, additional meetings may be necessary. Routine check-ins against the agenda enhance productivity.
Even with clear agendas, discussions can still veer off-track without a proactive facilitator. It's the meeting owner's responsibility to monitor group dynamics and intercede when conversations lose focus.
Some common challenges include:
Dominant personalities commandeering airtime
Tangents that distract from core priorities
Unproductive debates that become cyclical or heated
Individuals disengaging or multitasking
Address these situations diplomatically but directly. Tactful redirection preserves momentum without embarrassing participants.
For example, if someone introduces an unrelated matter, you might say, "That's an important issue, but let's note it as a separate discussion topic so we can give it the attention it deserves without derailing our current agenda."
If conversation grows contentious, model objectivity by validating each perspective nonjudgmentally: "I appreciate you raising that concern. Let's examine it alongside the other factors we've discussed and aim to find the best path forward together."
When engagement wavers, reinvigorate the group with provocative questions, request insights from quieter voices, or suggest a quick energizer break. Sustaining participant interest is key to a fruitful meeting.
Best Practice #4: Pin Down Action Items and Owners
Meetings that don't catalyze progress afterward failed to accomplish their core purpose. That's why identifying concrete next steps is essential.
Summarize meeting takeaways verbally first to confirm consensus, then extract specific action items and assign clear owners and deadlines for each one. This accountability prevents critical tasks from slipping through the cracks.
For example, after deciding on a new pricing strategy, key next steps may include:
Betty completes financial model supporting price change (Due Jan 5)
Janet updates marketing collateral with new pricing (Due Jan 15)
Annie builds pricing option selector prototype (Due Jan 10)
Review each step with its owner to verify their understanding and commitment. An owner who leaves a meeting unsure of expectations or overwhelmed by their task will struggle to follow through successfully.
Where relevant, set milestone check-ins between the meeting and final deadline so the team can course-correct if needed. This is especially important for consequential, long-term efforts without an imminent end date.
Best Practice #5: Log the Meeting
Promptly documenting meetings enhances clarity and prevents confusion when referencing past sessions. While taking notes works, AI-powered meeting transcription tools can help accelerate this process with automated speech-to-text.
Send a summary email to participants focused on action items, owners, and deadlines. Attach complete meeting notes or share access to a collaborative editing space for reference.
Here's a sample post-meeting email:
Subject: Recap from Pricing Model Discussion
Team,
Thanks for your input around revising our pricing model in today's meeting. We've decided to increase prices by 10% based on our analysis. Please refer to the notes below for your next steps on this initiative.
Meeting Notes: shortenedurl.com/pricingdiscussion
Thanks!
Clement
Beyond the core attendees, consider whether any nonparticipants would benefit from the summary. Keeping appropriate stakeholders informed bolsters transparency and organizational alignment.
Closing Thoughts
Meetings are a powerful tool for aligning teams, sparking innovation, and driving initiatives forward. By designating meeting owners, crafting focused agendas, matching meeting format to objectives, intervening diplomatically to maintain momentum, crystallizing next steps, and documenting outcomes, product managers extract the full potential from these collaborative sessions. Thoughtful meeting orchestration transforms a potential productivity drain into a launching pad for product excellence.
But remember, meetings aren't an unqualified good. Continually scrutinize whether a meeting is genuinely the best way to achieve an objective. When possible, empower asynchronous collaboration so meetings remain an enhancing complement to your team's workflow, not a dominating force.
Used judiciously, well-designed meetings propel products, teams, and companies toward outsized outcomes. Deployed haphazardly, they undermine focus, motivation, and effectiveness. As product leaders, we must wield this tool with care and mastery.
By following these best practices, you'll amplify meeting ROI, galvanize your teams around shared goals, and channel collective effort toward delivering extraordinary products that captivate customers.
The path to PM success traverses the meeting room – navigate it wisely!
Thank you to Pauli Bielewicz, Mary Paschentis, Goutham Budati, Markus Seebauer, Juliet Chuang, and Kendra Ritterhern for making this guide possible.
