Accounting Office Management & Administration Report

July 2005

How to Make Your Firm’s Meetings More Productive

Although CPA firms are in the midst of the most important meeting time of the year—firm retreats—shorter, more casual meetings happen year-round. Since partners, administrators, and staff are busier than ever, you must make the most of your meeting time.

While you want to be efficient, you don‘t want to lose sight of the benefits to meetings: You can use them as forums for discussing issues, planning alliances, resolving differences, making decisions, and setting policies. In fact, meetings are considered so essential that a majority of business leaders think that CPA firm leaders and others should spend an average of 23 hours a week in them, according to the Wharton Center for Applied Research (Philadelphia; 215-320-3200).

The problem with meetings is that too many of them end up in time-wasting speeches, unstructured discussion, and frustration. The reason: Many meetings are simply unnecessary—they happen because some leaders have a reflex action to call a meeting whenever a problem or question arises. In some cases, the very mechanics of a meeting can work against yielding significant results.

Here’s a scenario familiar to any CPA firm administrator or managing partner:

You decide that the joint venture proposed to your firm by a potential alliance partner CPA firm needs to be discussed and reviewed by your partners. Since this will be a large alliance engagement, you want to include your managing partner, firm administrator, partners-in-charge of several practice groups that will be involved in the work, and staff who will be working directly on the engagement.
The firm administrator contacts the 10 individuals involved. After much effort and many phone calls and e-mails, he is finally able to coordinate everyone’s schedules.
You resolve the meeting date and time issue. However, the partner who made the "connection" with the potential joint venture firm may arrive a few minutes late because she is at another client meeting, and two staff members who work on flex-time schedules will have to come into the office especially for the meeting.
The meeting is set for Tuesday at 2 p.m. and is scheduled to last 90 minutes. The firm administrator e-mails a four-point agenda and a 750-word background memo. At 2 p.m. sharp, the firm administrator and managing partner arrive. Staff members show up between 2:10 and 2:15, and all the partners are present—except for the key partner, who calls in to say she is stuck in a traffic jam.
At 2:25 you decide to get started and hope that the missing partner turns up soon. The managing partner presents the opportunity, and asks for discussion. One of the partners whose practice group will be involved in the work launches into a vocal discourse on the benefits and drawbacks of the deal, along with his philosophy on joint ventures and alliances in general.
Another partner did not read the background information, but offers an opinion anyway about the potential arrangement and how her staff will be affected.
At 2:45, the missing partner finally arrives. It takes 15 minutes to fill her in on what has transpired so far, and the two partners who have already spoken want to expand on their ideas.
It is now 3:00 and no real discussion has occurred about the proposed alliance—just speeches and revised speeches. The key partner begins talking about how she knows the lead partner on the potential engagement at the joint alliance firm, and then finally describes what the work would be. Unfortunately, this was already covered in the background memo sent to all of the participants. However, those who did not read the memo are hearing about it for the first time.
3:30 arrives and key items on your agenda—what steps to take next, who is to take them, what action to take, and when to take it—are not yet on the table.

You look at your options:

1. Extend the meeting. However, the two flex-time staff have to leave to pick up kids from babysitters, and one of the partners has another meeting scheduled for 4:00. You could ask those who must leave to e-mail recommendations to the firm administrator.

2. Adjourn the meeting now, and call for a follow-up meeting. This produces the same scheduling problem as before.

Since the other firm has requested a decision about the alliance, you decide to extend the meeting, which finally ends at 4:20, with everyone dazed, and a few details to be ironed out. You figure you’ll handle details by phone and e-mail.

Committees. Ad hoc meetings such as this one are not the only time-wasters. Now that many CPA firms are adopting a more corporate structure, committee meetings are added to the mix. These differ from one-time meetings mainly in that they convene on a fairly regular schedule. There are three types:

1. Internal committees, such as the management or executive committee, marketing committee, or a committee that develops ideas for growth. Firm leaders exert some clout over content and schedule of these get-togethers.

2. Professional committees, such as the local chapter of a professional association. Partners are likely to be involved in these meetings, which may take place offsite or be hosted in your offices.

3. Outside corporate, charitable, or community organization boards. Here, a partner may be just a member and the time control is in someone else’s hands.

In all three types of committee meetings, the regularity of the schedule is the greatest time-waster of all. If the local chapter meets every second Monday of the month from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., you may either (1) waste time in amiable conversation if the agenda is too thin, or (2) rush the agenda or remain for an hour past the scheduled adjournment time if the agenda is too crowded.

Committee meetings tend to have large attendances, which makes action more difficult. They also suffer from the archetypal drawback of large-group decision making—the decisions aren’t necessarily the best, simply ones the majority can agree on.

How to manage your committee time right, and everyone else’s, too. Here are some do’s and don’ts that will help all of your CPA firm leaders to make better use of meeting time:

Do:

Consider not meeting because (1) the issue may be one you can resolve yourself, with perhaps a couple of courtesy calls to others, or (2) you could handle the matter by e-mailing the group. Pose issues, invite responses (with a word limit), and circulate responses to others using the "reply to all" command. A firm leader should be able to distill the content and issue a final recommendation or proposal for sign-off by all. This method works especially well with groups that are widely dispersed or that have complicated schedules.
Proceed with the meeting. Start on time. Stick to the agenda. Chastise any member who is unprepared. Limit all talk to the point under discussion. Discourage pronouncements and encourage comments and suggestions.
Visually record interim decisions. Post decisions and information where everyone can see them. Drawback: Don’t let posting dominate the meeting—the time may be better spent in moving the agenda. And posting could become a distraction.
Make the room somewhat uncomfortable. Keep it a bit warm (or cool) and don’t serve refreshments. Focus attention on the agenda and nothing else. It may seem a bit draconian, but decreasing the comfort level will make participants less inclined to linger.
Encourage participation by speaker phone or video. This will give you input from people who can’t be present. Problem: Offsite attendees can’t see your body language and you can’t see theirs.
Retain a facilitator for important gatherings. With a heavy agenda or 15 or more participants, a facilitator can move matters along, avoid dwelling too long on a single topic, and draw interim conclusions to the group’s attention. It helps to choose a person who is familiar with CPA firms.

Don’t:

Schedule another meeting if the first one doesn’t finish its assigned job. If you’ve set an objective for the meeting, make sure it’s accomplished. To schedule meeting after meeting will make the participants lose interest and commitment.
Let your firm’s 800-pound gorillas dominate the agenda. Redirect the meeting politely but firmly.
Run the meeting if it’s clear the participants are unprepared.

Final details. Have the minutes written up promptly and circulated to participants within two or three business days. Unless you have strong reasons (such as reaching those who were absent and didn’t participate, but should know what went on), limit the minutes to actions taken, not to who said what.

How do you measure the success of a meeting? Aside from hearing about participants’ satisfaction (or lack of it), the best way is to examine how well the actions planned and taken respond to the objective and agenda points.