Whether you call it the parking lot, the issues bin, or the issues list, accumulating contributed items that aren't quite on topic during a given meeting can help keep the meeting focused and moving forward. Here are some tips to help you get more from the practice, or to motivate you to start.
- Make it visible
- Enter the items on a flip chart or other medium that's visible to all. Visibility helps deter duplication, and it might spur additional creativity.
- Enlist a valet
- A meeting of more than about seven people needs a parking lot valet — someone to record the items, and to verify that the contributors agree with the wording. For smaller meetings, the scribe or recorder can play the valet role.
- Encourage self-parking
- Encourage meeting attendees to self-park. That is, if a contributor knows in advance that a contribution will be parked, why not add it to the parking lot after the meeting? Although there is some value in announcing the contribution during the meeting, the time lost doing so is also valuable.
- Review at meeting's end
- A very brief end-of-meeting review of the parking lot should assign to each item someone from leadership to "own" it and follow it to resolution.
- Follow up
- Every item from the parking lot should make a later appearance as a part of a future agenda item, or on the next edition of the parking lot resolution list, or on the cumulative parking-lot-awaiting-resolution list. Nothing should disappear into the void. Each item's owner is responsible for tracking it.
- Track the contributors
- Track the contributors of parked items. Investigate why some people repeatedly offer items that end in the parking lot. Do they not understand the agenda? Are they uniquely brilliant? Are their concerns being ignored? Why are they not self-parking?
- Maintain a parking lot history
- Every item from the parking lot
should make a later appearance
as a part of a future agenda item
or a parking lot resolution list - Compile all parking lots, and examine them for patterns. Are some kinds of items repeatedly parked? If so, perhaps these are issues that need attention, or perhaps some people are preventing them from getting attention.
- Track the context
- Track the contexts in which parking lot items appear. A high incidence of parked items might indicate that the group hasn't been proactive in that topic area — the issues involved are "running ahead" of the group.
Any tool can be abused, including the parking lot. The chair, for instance, can use it to stifle discussion of any topic not explicitly on the agenda. Tracking parked items can limit this risk, but you might have to deal with parking lot abuse as a performance issue. Since that can be a complex question, and it isn't on today's agenda, I've added it to the parking lot. Top Next Issue
Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!
The term parking lot is an Americanism. Even though the British call them car parks, my colleague Graham Oakes reports that the term "parking lot" works in the context of meetings in the United Kingdom. My colleague Nynke Fokma reports from other European languages: Bent (Danish) says, "Boette" (Marmalade jar); Emmanuel (French) says, "Parking"; Nynke (Dutch) says, "Even opzij?" (Aside for now?); and Marco (Italian) says, "Possiamo parlarne dopo?" (Can we talk about this later?).
More reports: Mary Ann (Tagalog (Phillipines)) says, "Tsaká na" (Later). Christine (Sydney, Australia, where she works with environmental organizations) says, "Let's park that in the bike rack for later."
If you send me your term from your own language, I'll post it.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- The Focusing Illusion in Organizations
- The judgments we make at work, like the judgments we make elsewhere in life, are subject to human fallibility
in the form of cognitive biases. One of these is the Focusing Illusion. Here are some examples to watch for.
- False Summits: II
- When climbers encounter "false summits," hope of an early end to the climb comes to an end.
The psychological effects can threaten the morale and even the safety of the climbing party. So it is
in project work.
- Creating Toxic Conflict: II
- Some supervisors seem to behave as if part of their job description is creating toxic conflict among
their subordinates. It isn't really, of course, but here's a collection of methods bad managers use
that make trouble.
- Be Choosier About Job Offers: II
- An unfortunate outcome of job searches occurs when a job seeker feels forced to accept an offer that
isn't a good fit. Sometimes financial pressures are so severe that the seeker has little choice. But
financial pressures are partly perceptual. Here's how to manage feeling that pressure.
- Flexible Queue Management
- In meetings of 5-30 participants, managing the queue of contributors can be challenging. A strict first-in-first-out
order can cause confusion and waste time if important contributions are delayed. Some meetings need
more flexible queue management.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Effective Meetings for more related articles.
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- Knowing how to recognize just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can be helpful in reducing the incidence of problems. Here is Part 1 of a collection of communication antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure. Available here and by RSS on April 24.
- And on May 1: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 2
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 2 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing those that depend on content. Available here and by RSS on May 1.
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