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O P I N I O N
Hosting project meetings
A good project meeting is like a dinner party: You’re the host and it’s your job to make sure your guests have a great experience.
W orking in a multi-discipline firm like TETER, I’ve been on both the hosting and attending side of project kick-off meetings.
There are two key things that make a difference on how I feel about the meeting: 1. When I get the information. Coming into a kick- off meeting as an attendee, I enjoy having the information up front as I can start to formulate questions in advance to ask the design team when we’re all present. This lets me actually start working on the project when we have the kick-off meeting, instead of playing phone tag or exchanging lengthy emails. As an engineer, it should come as no surprise that efficient meetings are the most enjoyable ones. I feel that my time in the meeting has value when I can pose my questions and receive answers as well as answer questions posed by others. Coming into a kick-off meeting as a project manager, my team’s time is valuable. If I look at the kick-off meeting in terms of dollars, an hour-
long kick-off meeting (accounting for various billing rates) can easily cost around a thousand dollars. With this in mind, taking the time to organize the information I have and preemptively answer the questions I know the other disciplines are going to have will be much more efficient for me to do as the manager than for each individual to do on their own. If I don’t know all the answers, I can at least get the ball rolling with an email or phone call. 2. Howmy time is spent. As an attendee, I dislike meetings where all I do is listen to someone read the slides or handouts verbatim – that wastes my time as I can read much faster than the presenter can talk! My time is valuable, and if I’m bored I’ll secretly work on a different project as I pay loose attention to what’s going on – and as most meetings these days are virtual, that’s now even
Aya Shitanishi
Megan Chang
See AYA SHITANISHI & MEGAN CHANG, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 10, 2022, ISSUE 1423
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