Background

As the newest member of the support staff for Sonya Edelstein, director of engineering at Plectrum Industries, you are charged with taking minutes for the Friday meeting of the engineering staff. The meetings are attended by 12 to 15 engineers and cover many issues, including progress reports from project-team leaders, status reports from division heads, announcements about updated policies, and procedures and general news items of interest to the engineers in the room.

“What I’m seeing,” Sonya says to you, “is that these meetings are getting longer and longer. I guess you’ve seen that, too.”

“Actually, I have,” you say. It takes you anywhere from two to five hours to write up the minutes. Because of privacy concerns, your organization prohibits the recording of meetings, so you must rely on your notes, and because the discussions can be fast and very technical, you need to show drafts of portions of the minutes to various attendees to be sure your explanations are clear and accurate.

“I looked through the file of minutes for the last year, and I didn’t like what I saw. We held 22 Friday meetings. They lasted an average of about one and three-quarter hours, with an average of 13.4 people in attendance. Do you know the average hourly salary of the people in the room?” (Sonya liked to pose questions that you couldn’t possibly answer. Luckily, she never expects you to answer.) “With benefits, it’s $43.35. Do you see where I’m going?”

“You’re going to tell me how much it costs us to hold these meetings?”

“That’s right. It works out to more than $22,000, not counting the coffee.” She continues to gaze at you.

“That sounds like a lot,” you say.

“Here’s what I’d like you to do. I want to send out a memo to all the engineering division heads, explaining how we need to cut down the time we spend in meetings. Look around on the web. Read up on agendas. Look around for templates. I downloaded this one from Word,” she says, passing you a sheet of paper (Document 12.1). “But it doesn’t do much for me because it doesn’t tell you how long each item is going to take. I think that’s the key: we have to tell people at the start how long they have. Otherwise, some of them just go on and on. And we have to be sure we’re using meetings for tasks that can be done only in meetings. We need to use other media for things that don’t require that we all be together in a room.”

“Okay, so we’re going beyond the agenda itself, right?”

“That’s right. We’re getting into how to hold meetings—what the ground rules are. But I think the key is to use an agenda to establish a plan for the meeting.”

Download the document below, and then begin your assignment.

Download a copy of Document 12.1.

Your Assignment

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the case background and document, complete the assignment below. Your instructor will tell you how he or she would like you to submit your work.

1. Search the Internet for advice on conducting meetings and using agendas. Look for agenda templates in your word-processing software and on the Internet. Write a brief directive that Sonya could revise and distribute to her engineering staff. In this directive, explain the reasoning behind the new policy of using an agenda to cut down the length of meetings and limit meetings to the kinds of communication that require face-to-face interaction.

2. Either select a template for meeting agendas that you think Sonya will find useful or adapt or create one. In a word-processing file, present the template (don’t forget to cite the source if you did not create it yourself) and include an explanation of how Sonya can use the template for future Friday meetings. In this explanation, reinforce the points you made in Assignment 1 about how participants will be expected to participate in these meetings.

Reflecting on Your Work

Once you’ve completed your assignment, write a reflection about your work using the prompt below.

Question 12.4