What’s Time to a Pig?

How to keep meetings from being time suckers, and what to do if you can’t.

Keith Twitchell spent 16 years running his own business before becoming president of the Committee for a Better New Orleans. He has observed, supported and participated in entrepreneurial ventures at the street, neighborhood, nonprofit, micro- and macro-business levels.


Meetings are often maligned, lampooned and generally disrespected. Bad meetings can indeed be a nightmare, but good meetings are wellsprings of creativity, productivity and success.

How do you make your meetings the kind people look forward to rather than the kind people schedule root canals to avoid? The following are a few tips for success — plus my secret to surviving the second kind.

Rule No. 1: Keep control.
Just like a ship with no captain quickly ends up on the rocks, a meeting that is not firmly led sinks rapidly.

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Successfully maintaining control is largely a function of pre-meeting planning and preparation. Most meetings need a clear, sensible agenda, preferably one that allocates a specific amount of time to each topic. This helps an organizer see up front if it is possible to get through an agenda within the meeting timeframe. It keeps the discussion focused, gives an organizer an excuse to cut off wandering conversations, and lets participants know that there is structure and intent to the meeting.

Rule No. 2: Ensure you have the right people, and right number of people.
With the exception of standing gatherings like staff or board meetings, it is important to be thoughtful about who has a seat at the table. The right mix of personalities, expertise and perspectives makes for a productive conversation; the wrong mix makes for a mosh pit.

Smaller numbers generally produce better meetings, but if you must convene a larger group, establishing some ground rules adds additional structure. These do not have to be elaborate, and they should be geared toward making the conversation respectful, inclusive and focused.

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Rule No. 3: No hijackers allowed.
Nothing causes other participants to check out faster than a meeting dominator. Some people are just aggressive personalities and need to be held in check with tight reins. Others are simply incapable of saying anything succinctly and may require a gentler hand, but they still have to be harnessed.

I used to be in a group that met regularly, including several of the lengthy orator types. The person who ran the meetings used the “land the plane” analogy to try to curtail the ramblings, initially with limited success. She finally made an actual paper plane, and soon had everyone trained that if she picked it up, it was time to wrap up the monologue.

Rule No. 4: Embrace humor.
This touches on another point: Unless the subject matter is dead serious, meetings where people laugh are more productive meetings. Appropriate laughter relieves tension, makes people happy, and builds a sense of camaraderie and teamwork.

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Rule No. 5: Think ahead.
If an upcoming meeting topic is sensitive, complicated or controversial, and you believe coming to consensus will be necessary but difficult, talk to the key participants beforehand. You know who the influencers are in your group; determine where they stand on the issues. Hearing their concerns and getting them aligned before the meeting can help lead the conversation in the preferred direction.

If Things Go Bad Wrong
But sometimes you are not in charge. And sometimes the person who is in charge has done none of the above, and you regret deeply that you did not bring your invisibility potion with you to the meeting. In those excruciating situations, remember this little story:

A man was out driving and passed a farmer holding a pig up to an apple tree. The sight caused the man to screech to a halt, jump out of his car, and ask the farmer, “Why are you holding that pig up to the tree?”

“My pig likes apples, so I’m feeding him apples,” replied the farmer.

“Wouldn’t you save a lot of time if you knocked the apples off the tree so the pig could eat them off the ground?” asked the man.

The farmer pondered for a moment, then replied, “I guess so. But what’s time to a pig?”
Relax. Be the pig, and get whatever apples you can.

Keith Twitchell’s blog, “Neighborhood Biz,” appears every Thursday at BizNewOrleans.com.

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