Facilitating effective meetings

Meetings are essential for cross-functional collaboration, but poorly run meetings waste time and create frustration. When you bring cross-functional teams together, you're asking busy professionals to invest their limited time. Make it worthwhile by having a clear purpose for every meeting. Is this about making a decision? Solving a problem? Sharing information? When participants understand the "why" behind the meeting, they arrive prepared and engaged. Create and send the agenda in advance and reference it during the meeting to stay on track.

Be thoughtful about attendance. The product designer working on the checkout flow probably doesn't need to sit through a technical discussion about database architecture. Consider using the RACI framework (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to determine who truly needs to attend versus who can receive notes afterward.

Creating space for different voices is especially important in cross-functional settings. Engineers might need prompting to share concerns about a marketing timeline, while designers might hesitate to push back on technical constraints. As the facilitator, actively invite these perspectives because they often reveal crucial insights.