A Periodic Table of Meetings Overview

Oct 30, 2017 by Elise Keith in behind the scenes, meeting design (8 minute read)

In the month since we published a taxonomy of the 16 Types of Business Meetings,

we’ve heard from many people who say it’s given them a useful new perspective on
how to approach their meetings. We’ve also been asked many times about the chart
featured in that post, which has since been shared on social media over a thousand
times.

(Admittedly, not as hot as a Beyoncé snapshot, but c’mon! This is a taxonomy of

meeting types we’re talking about here.)

The original post is very long and details the process we used to define each type.

Missed the original? If you have an hour, go read it now! Otherwise, here are the high
points:

1. A meeting is not a meeting. If you want to run better meetings, you need to
know the best way to run the kind of meetings you need to run. Generic best
practices won't cut it.
2. You can tell that one meeting is different from another based on these
characteristics:

o the intention, or purpose and desired outcomes,

o the meeting format,
o and the expected participation profile, or, who normally runs and who
normally attends these kind of meetings.
3. We organized and sorted and grouped and examined every kind of meeting we
could find, and narrowed them all down to 16 distinct types of meetings.
Throughout that process, we knew that there were important relationships between
different kinds of meetings, and that exploring these relationships added yet another
layer of usefulness to the taxonomy. When you understand not just the types, but also
the relationships between meeting types, it gets much easier to answer the key
question: Is this meeting the meeting we need?

So—the day before publishing the original blog post—we sat down and tried pull
together the pattern. The result is the chart you see here:
Chart of Meetings by Type
“It’s like a periodic table of meetings, isn’t it?”
Wow, I wish. I’ve been asked this exact question at least 10 times, and I admit we
were aiming for something along those lines. When push came to shove, though, we
couldn’t find a way to divine the relative atomic weights of a One-on-One or a Decision
Making Meeting. This chart isn’t quite that orderly.

That said, there are a few organizing principles at work here.

I’m going to explain the patterns in the chart with this caveat: there’s room for
improvement, the chart will probably change in the future, and your advice on the
matter would be most appreciated.

The Rows
The rows group meetings with similar design characteristics. All the meetings in a row
share a common perspective on the organization’s work and involve people in similar
ways. In the original post, these were the three major subgroups in the taxonomy.

The Cadence Meetings

We Review, Renew, Refine: Meetings with Known Participants and Predictable Patterns
These meetings involve existing groups executing on known work. They maintain and
shape the organization’s current state.

These meetings reveal the organization’s reality.

A solid circle to represent a stable connection between participants, and the cog
wheel of time, to represent known work.
Note: I’ve also been told the icons blow chunks. Designer friends, I’m open to your
better ideas!

Most Cadence meetings involve some form of information sharing, problem solving, and
decision making; the traditional break-down of meeting types. But these are NOT
dedicated decision making meetings (for example).
Psychologically, these meetings struggle to balance accountability and camaraderie.
Because the Cadence meetings must balance accountability and camaraderie, and
because they often have multiple desired outcomes (updates, decisions, etc.), they’re
harder to run well.

To succeed, these meetings need the right timing and framing. The language used to
name these meetings matters a lot.

The Catalyst Meetings

The Right Group to Create Change: Meetings with Participants and Patterns Customized
to Fit the Need
These meetings seek to create change in the organization.

What happens in these meetings reveals who the organization thinks it should be.

A dashed circle to represent an impermanent connection between participants, with

the light bulb of inspiration at the center.
A meeting dedicated entirely to solving a problem or making a decision elevates the
importance of those decisions. Because these are special events, it becomes possible to
use techniques that lead to better outcomes but would be awkward in a Cadence
meeting.

To succeed, these meetings need the right structure.

Psychologically, these meetings struggle to balance several competing values. Do we

push towards increased stability or embrace change? How do we get to an answer
that’s “Good” and “Done”? There’s a tension between getting the best result and
reaching a result that can quickly be put to use.

Meetings to Explore and Influence

Efforts to Learn, Evaluate and Influence: Meetings Between Us and Them, with
Information to Share and Questions to Answer
These meetings seek to learn, understand and influence the organization’s context.

These meetings reveal the organization’s values.

People on opposite sides, meeting from different perspectives on a common

question.
To succeed, these meetings need to be approached with the right mindset.

Psychologically, these meetings struggle to balance openness and confidence. True

learning and negotiation requires an admission of ignorance that’s hard to balance with
the need to impress and control.

The Colors
Moving from the left to the right of the chart, the heading colors shift from a lighter
blue to a darker blue. A handful of the meetings have red headings.

The colors convey the emotional tenor common to those kinds of meetings.

The lighter blue meetings tend to be congenial. Relatively friendly and non-
threatening.
 Synonyms
for Congenial: pleasant, agreeable, enjoyable, satisfying, gratifying, delightful, relaxing,
welcoming, hospitable, suitable
(Side note: when you see a team meeting that is not congenial— where people look like
they’re headed to an inquisition or tempers flare openly, or where everyone shuffles in
and out listlessly—something is very wrong in that team.)

The darker blue meetings tend to be more formal. They may still be friendly, but
they require more social effort.

By way of example (and a bit of oversharing) my husband and I enjoy swashbuckling

and salty language, and sometimes a bit of that spirit leaks out when we’re in a light-
blue meeting. For the dark blue meetings, we stow our pirate selves below decks.
 Synonyms for
Formal: ceremonial, ritualistic, official, traditional, decorous, dignified
The red meetings can be intense. These are often meetings with high-stakes
outcomes and include what the social scientists call “high-stakes social evaluations”; too
heavy on the cortisol to be healthy every day fare.

Synonyms for
Intense: extreme, acute, fierce, extraordinary, potent, overpowering, vigorous
Clues to an Organization’s Meeting
Performance Maturity
One final layer: you can get a feel for an organization’s scope and performance
maturity by counting which kind of meetings they run and seeing how clearly they
recognize the distinctions between these meetings. Very young/immature organizations
“just meet”. Mature organizations develop and refine structures to improve outcomes in
each scenario.

Here the pattern isn’t as clean, unfortunately. I was hoping to come up with something
that worked like a game of meeting performance maturity bingo; mark off all the
meetings in a section and you are a maturity level 3 winner!

It didn’t work out that way. Instead, it looks more like this.
As organizations grow and mature, they run more distinct meetings.

1. Most organizations run the meetings in the top-left corner (team cadence,
progress checks, etc.), and introductions.
 2. As an organization gets bigger and more complicated, they start adding more
kinds of meetings. For example, one-on-ones don’t become “a thing” the
organization does until they have a management layer. Once you get to that 10-
20+ size, though, other kinds of meetings become inevitable.
This doesn’t mean that they run all these meetings well, or with clear intention.
It’s very possible to run many different kinds of meetings with Level 2 maturity.
3. More mature organizations have processes for most of the different meeting
types and they treat each as specialized meetings. If you schedule a problem
solving or community of practice meeting, and you KNOW that you’re doing that,
there’s a good chance you’ve taken some time to figure out how to make that
kind of discussion work. If you run a decision making meeting, and the people
you invite know what to expect from a dedicated decision-making meeting,
you’re operating at a higher level of meeting performance maturity than most
organizations.
By contrast, less mature organizations try to get the outcomes of a problem
solving or community of practice meeting in a regularly scheduled Cadence
meeting. Or by just “meeting about that thing”. This isn’t particularly effective.

Let’s keep slicing through these layers

Shrek: For your information, there's a lot more to ogres (Meetings!)
than people think.
Donkey: Example?
Shrek: Example... uh... ogres (and MEETINGS!) are like onions!
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes... No!
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry?
Shrek: No!
Donkey: Oh, you leave 'em out in the sun, they get all brown, start
sproutin' little white hairs...
Shrek: NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres (Meetings!) have layers...
You get it? We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody like
onions. CAKE! Everybody loves cake! Cakes have layers!
Shrek: I don't care what everyone likes! Ogres/meetings are not like
cakes.
Donkey: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever
met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Hell no, I
don't like no parfait."? Parfaits are delicious!
Shrek: NO! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden! Ogres and
meetings are like onions! End of story! Bye-bye! See ya later.
Donkey: Parfaits may be the most delicious thing on the whole damn
planet!
modified dialogue from Shrek
You know what? I have a 5-year-old daughter who will put all the extra onions on her
plate, because I know how to cook an onion so it tastes like candy. Maybe not quite as
tasty as parfait, but pretty darn tasty.

Meetings are like onions. There are layers to this stuff, and if you don’t treat it right,
you will make people cry. And yet, if you cook at all, you know there are onions in
everything. Just like every single organization is full of meetings.

We’ll keep peeling back these layers to figure out how to help everyone turn all the
crying over meetings into frizzled shallots and bloomin’ onion awesomeness. Please
share your ideas, techniques, and feedback in the comments below.