You know those meetings?

When people don’t know what’s going on in a project, they often hold long progress meetings to get updates and information about what everyone has been doing.

Such meetings are often filled with fear, pride, cover-ups, accusations, blame-shifting and arguments.

What should meetings be like, though?

When Project Management is working well, we already know the status of the project before we come to meetings, because we have good information systems and processes to support a culture of responsible risk reporting.

People come to meetings prepared to discuss the risks they’re all already aware of, and to figure out together what to do about these risks.

So, how do we get to that point, where we have this culture and these systems, and where our meetings are focused and productive? Here is how we start.