Accountability Technique: Schedule. The. Meeting.

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps you gain mental leverage to achieve the results you desire.

—The Accountability Stop

My boss and I meet every few weeks to discuss company processes, problems, and possible improvements. We occasionally come up with a small improvement to try. He often expresses appreciation that I make this meeting happen and that we continue the discussion. 

When I go back to my desk after our meeting, I do the only truly necessary part of our process. I schedule the next meeting. Were it not for that, the process would stagnate and die. We can’t just say “let’s get together again in a few weeks.” Everyone knows it would be six months before we would remember to meet. We need the meeting on our calendars.

In Defense of Meetings

Most of us cringe at the idea of adding another meeting to our schedules in order to be accountable. Corporate life is overwhelmed with meetings. Death by Powerpoint continues unabated, even though it has obtained cliché status. Who wants another meeting?

I agree that badly-planned and poorly-run meetings are a drain on time and resources. We should absolutely minimize our involvement in unnecessary meetings, whether we’re running them or attending them.

If you want to make progress on a project or habit, however, a meeting can be very motivating. It combines a couple of powerful accountability techniques:

• A meeting creates a deadline. If the meeting is to report on “the thing we said we’d do,” then we need to have it done by the meeting or have some report of what progress we’ve made.
• Meeting attendees are a de facto accountability buddy or group. We might not use that term. Someone at the meeting is expecting to see our progress. They might be our boss, our client, or our project team. We’ve said we’ll do the thing. We’ll be there in front of God and everyone. So if we’re going to be accountable and not waste people’s time, then we better have “the thing” complete. 

Buddy Meetings

Even with explicitly arranged accountability buddies outside of work, it’s easy to think that we’ll email regularly to report our progress. But if we don’t schedule the times — better yet, make it a recurring meeting — then we’re very likely to slip off the accountability bandwagon. A week turns into a month, and then two. Not only are we being unaccountable, but we’re adding a backlog of guilt to our mental load. 

A meeting may seem formal for informal buddies, but it greatly improves the odds that both of you will make progress. 

An Accountable Meeting

Plenty of advice is available online about running productive meetings. I want to make a few points regarding good accountability meetings.

Be proactive. Most of us are natural procrastinators. We’re happy to wait until someone else demands an update on progress before we even start to work on our project. Instead, we should create our own accountability and schedule the meeting ourselves. 

Have clear expectations. We might make a formal agenda, but it’s only important that we define the goals to be discussed and what progress is expected. Decide what is to be accomplished ahead of the meeting. If it’s a recurring meeting, identify the next meeting’s goals before the meeting ends.

Minimize the time. If a five minute check-in is all we need, just do that! Don’t make a meeting last a half-hour or an hour just because the calendar says so. 

When an important project of ours needs more work, we can be tempted to think we’ll naturally find time to do it. We’re tempted to say, “I’ll get back to you when I have more to show you.” Don’t give in to that temptation! Schedule the meeting. It forces our hand to make sure we stay accountable for our promises. 

What’s Your Account?

Have you ever scheduled a meeting to be accountable? Would you consider it, or do you think meetings are the root of all evil?