4 Tips for Successful Business Meetings - ARGO

Most business meetings turn out to be complete waste of time and most of the times after the meeting we realise that same information could be covered better over email.

Recently, I completed training program in commercial negotiation and mediation for resolving business disputes, which helped me formulate a simple approach for getting the most out of business meetings. Considering Argo is one of my favourite movies, I embodied the approach using the same name, i.e. ARGO:

A - Agenda

R - Reality Check

G- Gestures

O - Open ended questions

Agenda

Having a set agenda in advance will reduce the need for physical meetings by more than 90%. It is commonly seen that more than half of meeting is spent in deciding what each attendee expects out of the meeting. If the agenda is set out and shared in advance, we can differentiate between the need for one-way information dissemination and two-way information sharing.

To simplify things, it is better to have a simple point by point agenda ready on the notepad at the beginning of the meeting and the same can be shared with the attendees so that everyone is on the same page. This can work well for situations where it is not possible to set and share agenda of the meeting in advance.

For example, during a recent meeting to discuss setting up an investment fund, I spent first 10 minutes of the meeting with the client to formulate the agenda, including choice of jurisdiction, tax implications, corporate structuring, choice of alternatives and applicable regulations. Once client agreed with the agenda, we ended up having a fruitful meeting in 40 minutes, whereas we scheduled it initially for an hour and expected it would stretch further.

Reality Check

During the course of some meetings, passion and adrenaline start pumping, specially during brainstorming sessions. Hence it remains important to stay on course of the agenda else discussions can tread beyond topics. One easy way of maintaining the flow on right tangent is to conduct reality checks during the meeting.

For example, during a brainstorming session for developing a patent portfolio for a SME, we spent almost half an hour discussing how multiple patents can be filed worldwide considering the immense potential of our client’s technology. Client was focusing more on strategy part and considering how passionate he was, it was not right to interrupt his flow of thoughts. So I politely asked him to throw some light on financial aspect and the budget he can allocate to the entire patent process. Within 5 minutes, client himself realised that his bootstrapped venture would be better served by first filing one patent and then focusing on subsequent steps after his revenue goals are achieved.

Gestures

Gestures can really inject fuel into boring meetings and discussions. Once I was a part of brainstorming session to discuss most viable product (MVP) that could be offered by a startup. The founders had already conducted initial surveys and market research but wanted to take thoughts of various stakeholders into consideration before finalising their approach.

Since the session was organised in a casual setup with free flowing beer, everyone was really jumping in with their respective train of thoughts and hence when it was my turn to contribute, I used palm gestures to reduce the noise in the room. Consequently, different gestures were followed by others and meeting ended with really fruitful takeaways for the startup.

Here’s an example of palm gestures:

Images from here and here

Open-ended Questions

During course of most meetings, we feel the extreme urgency to correct other person if he is incorrect or to be a critic if we don’t like the way discussions are ongoing. A useful way of doing this is by asking open-ended questions instead of making contrary statements. This makes the entire discussion polite and professional, thereby ensuring positive environment.

For example, during a trademark dispute, client was really focussed on his brand without understanding the trademark rights pre-owned by opposing party, which made his case weak. While explaining his side of story, client was repeating statements saying that his brand was famous in the country. Now at that moment, replying about opponent’s strong legal position was not appropriate and hence I asked him couple of open-ended questions, like, “How famous his brand was?”, “Did his brand win any industry awards or accolades?”, and, “Will customers still buy his product if he decides to change the brand name?”. This way, discussion was diverted to concrete issues and we were able to formulate a negotiation strategy to prevent a potential lawsuit.

Conclusion

To conclude, ARGO can be used as a productive framework for improving meeting’s efficiency and getting the most out of regular discussions.

Additional resources:

1. Leadership Management – Excellence at Workplace – Qualities of a Transformational Leader
2. Coaching – Achieving Individual and Business Objectives – Conflict Prevention
3. Mediation Process – Alternate Dispute Resolution – Conflict Management Coaching
4. Negotiation – Planning Well Crafted Strategy to Convey Value
5. Training – Live and Virtual Workshops – Speaking Engagements

Rahul Dev is a Patent Attorney & International Business Lawyer practicing Technology, Intellectual Property & Corporate Laws. He is reachable at info (at) techcorplegal (dot) com & @rdpatentlawyer on Twitter

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