How to Turn a 10-Minute Chat Into a 60-Minute Meeting

A colleague has asked you a straightforward question. You know the answer. They are standing within speaking distance. This is a dangerous situation: without immediate intervention, work could occur without any visible evidence of collaboration.

Your first response should be “Let’s get some time in.” Do not answer the question while saying this. An answer would undermine the rationale for the meeting.

Invite the wider business

Begin with the two people who understand the issue. Add their managers, somebody from Finance and a stakeholder whose involvement nobody can quite explain. Mark everyone as required. Optional attendees are an admission that their time has value outside your agenda.

Book an hour. A thirty-minute slot implies that you have already estimated the complexity of the problem, which could later be used against you. An hour provides room for arrivals, departures and an extended account of why everyone is so busy.

Spend the first fifteen minutes establishing the call

Ask whether everyone can see your screen before sharing it. Share the wrong window. Stop sharing. Mention that it worked earlier. Once your screen is visible, read aloud the email that every attendee received yesterday.

Invite the person who originally asked the question to provide some background. Interrupt them halfway through to provide some additional background. The question should by now feel less like something that can be answered and more like a landscape that must be explored.

Protect the conversation from resolution

At the first sign of agreement, ask whether you are solving the right problem. This is an excellent question because it introduces a second problem without resolving the first. If necessary, draw three overlapping circles and label the middle one “alignment”.

By minute forty, someone will suggest a perfectly sensible course of action. Thank them and ask who else needs to be consulted. The important thing is to reward initiative without allowing it to reduce the attendance of the next meeting.

Finish with momentum

At minute fifty-eight, announce that you are conscious of time. Nothing demonstrates this awareness more convincingly than mentioning it after using almost all of it.

Agree to take the discussion offline, although it began there. Assign somebody to circulate notes and book a follow-up to review the notes. The original ten-minute chat now has a governance structure. Your calendar has never looked more productive.