Running Effective Meetings

In the fall of 1982, I went to Japan to meet with both Dr. Ryuji Fukuda and Dr. Shigeo Shingo.  I had just started to promote Dr. Shingo’s great “masterpiece” ‘The Study of the Toyota Production System’ and I was producing my first published book ‘Managerial Engineering’ by Dr. Fukuda.

Dr. Fukuda took me to a Meidensha Electric plant outside of Tokyo. Here working in one vast room was around 60 people, desks piled next to each other, both side to side and front to front. Your only privacy was to bend down behind the books piled on your desk. I immediately noticed a group of engineers having a standup meeting around one desk at the end of a row of desks. They were discussing one topic; everyone participated, questioned each other and then after a few minutes went back to their own desks. “Wow,” this is just great. This is the way to run an effective meeting.

Imagine in comparison our meetings:

1. Find a meeting room

2. Get agreement from all members as to the appropriate meeting time and length of the meeting

3. Establish an agenda in advance

4. Walk over to the meeting room

5. Wait for everyone to show up before you start

6. Listen to someone’s lecture and truly find it hard to keep your mind in focus

7. Questions:

a. Did you participate?

b. Did you feel the meeting had real value to your work?

c. Do you look forward to those meeting?

d. Etc.?

 How can you run an effective stand up meeting?

1. Signal your team with a buzzer – email – or just shout

2. Tell the urgent need for the meeting

3. Tell who you invited and where, when to meet

4. Open meeting with a stated problem

5. Stick to one topic

6. Get everyone to talk for a few seconds – the shorter the meeting the better

7. Get everyone’s agreement   

8. Summarize in a few seconds the key points – agree on future targets

9. Thank everyone

10. Close meeting

 
Other bloggers participating are:

    Bill Waddell at Evolving Excellence

    Chuck Frey at Innovation Weblog

    Hal Macomber at Reforming Project Management

    Joe Ely at Learning about Lean

    John Miller at  Panta Rei

    Mark Graban at Lean Manufacturing Blog

Norman Bodek

Blog - http://kaikaku.typepad.com/

Web - http://pcspress.com

Email - bodek@pcspress.com

Comments

[Chet Frame]

The meeting is a great place to start. Projects always start with meetings.

Recently, we have moved some companies forward to a situation I had when I was growing up in manufacturing. My office held nineteen people from Purchasing, Materials, Production Control, and Customer Service. Questions coming from customers could be answered in real time from within the room. Issues from the Production areas could be discussed and the appropriate information couls be shared with the customer. No one had to leave his or her desk.

With many companies moving toward cellular manufacturing, we have found it helpful to co-locate the Production, Materials, Quality, and Engineering personnel in a single area with a round table in the center that allows the players to turn and join the meeting. To have all of their information tools available to them, the "office" is located next to the production cell.

[Jinjer Markley]

I'm really, really new to the study of lean manufacturing and related concepts like Kaizen, so if there's a more appropriate place for me to get my questions answered, please direct me!!

I noticed most of the books I've read about lean, toyata production system, TQM, deming, etc. that I've found were written in the '80s or early '90s. What has happened to the populariy or understanding of these concepts in the US since then?

Also, I'm interested to know what happened to businesses held up as models for adoption of lean practices--apparently Ford WAS doing well at adopting lean, so why are they struggling now?

I also noticed in at least on one source that Kaizen can stifle innovation--something on of the other 7 bloggers mentioned today. Yet, Toyota came out with the Prius long before I ever expected to see even half an electric car--and last time I was in Japan, the cars were not nearly as conservative in styling as cars in the US are. what's up with that?

[Jon Miller]

Norman,

This is a wonderful post. I think taking walls down (literally and figuratively) is one of the most important things we can do to promote kaizen. It's especially true for project teams.

Jon