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It’s no secret that the term “pre-work” inspires groans, eye-rolls, and even—during that all-too-familiar moment of realization—a sense of impending doom. It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of asking people to do work beforehand, embed pre-work into your meetings. Whether it’s a simple slide deck or short document, your goal is to quickly bring people up to speed on “how we got here,” preemptively address questions that are easy to anticipate, and clarify the purpose of your time together. If you’re meeting in person, you might even print out the document and pair people up to review it together. After a period of silent memo-reading, invite everyone to input their thoughts, questions, and observations into a shared document to help get the conversation going. Google Docs, word clouds, or Mentimeter polls are helpful tools for this. And be sure to explain your reasoning for the pre-work. People don’t like to jump through hoops unnecessarily. This exercise isn’t meant to create more work or elongate meetings, but rather to boost efficiency and reduce unnecessary meetings down the road. |
| This tip is adapted from “How to Effectively Build Pre-Work into Meetings,” by Rae Ringel ( From HBR) |
