I want to talk tech, I want to jump into the detail – but most meetings aren’t with techies. To make it worse, the first 5 minutes of any meeting people are suffering from “meeting lag”, they’ve likely come from another meeting and are trying to context switch, thinking things like “why did the boring techies put a meeting in my calendar?”.

If you want to orientate people into your 30 minute meeting, even if it feels patronising, simply stating the reason really helps. Having an agenda, even if it’s only two points spoken, at the start, it will re-align peoples’ minds. I have to admit I don’t often put agendas in the meeting invite, but that is mostly because the agenda tends to change constantly all the way up to a meeting. 

Now you want to get into the meeting topic, a list of bullets , on screen, to set the scene can work. Often, though, every person will have a different view point – and you can use a diagram to set the scene in a few seconds. Using key terms in the solution, and key actors / personas / users and visualising their relationships, should enable everyone to focus down into the area you want to talk about.

To do this, the diagram needs to be simple, you have to pick (from the dozens of actors or components  possible) the right ones for each meeting. With only a few items on the diagram, people can digest it all. If you need a bit more detail, then have a second version ready to use. With more complex diagrams make sure there is something visually to “draw the eye” at the start of the narrative.

A good diagram, which might only be used once, can bridge between tech and non-tech in a moment – making the time much more productive. Once everyone is aligned you can pull out the next level of detail, or move on to the super complex infrastructure diagrams.