The standard measure of meeting success is attendance. If people showed up, the meeting happened. If the meeting happened, it was a success. This is not a measure of success. It is a measure of occurrence.
What meeting success actually looks like
A meeting is successful if it produces its intended outcome in a reasonable amount of time with the right people present. That is the complete definition. Everything else is secondary.
The honest scorecard
After any meeting, ask these questions:
- Was a decision made? If the meeting was supposed to produce a decision and did not, it was not successful.
- Do all attendees agree on what was decided? If three people leave with three different understandings of the outcome, the meeting produced confusion, not clarity.
- Are the action items owned and dated? An action item without an owner and a due date is a wish, not a commitment.
- Did it end on time? A meeting that runs over is a meeting that was not scoped correctly.
- Did it require a follow-up meeting? If the primary output of the meeting is another meeting, the meeting did not succeed.
The vanity metrics
Vanity metrics for meetings include: attendance rate, number of meetings held, meeting frequency, and whether the meeting had a slide deck. None of these measure whether the meeting was useful.
A meeting with 100% attendance that produced no decisions is not a successful meeting. It is a well-attended failure.
Improving the score
The fastest way to improve meeting success rates is to require a stated objective before any meeting is scheduled. Meetings without objectives cannot be measured against them. Meetings with objectives can.
The simple test: Could you write a two-sentence summary of what this meeting produced? If yes, the meeting was probably successful. If the summary would be "we discussed things and will follow up," it was not.