In the previous post, we went over the various types of ratholes and some of the ways that they can derail your meetings. In this post, we'll be switching gears and detailing how to address, avoid and mitigate ratholes once you've stumbled into one.
We'll start off with the best and easiest way of managing ratholes, by having someone assigned to be a meeting referee which is sometimes called a rathole monitor. The person assigned to this role should be keeping their eyes open for whenever the meeting discussion veers away from the current agenda topic. They can easily get things back on track by calling things out as a rathole so that the meeting attendees can determine what to do with the side discussion and switch back to the topic at hand.
But what do you do if the referee doesn't see the rathole but someone else in the meeting does? Everyone in the meeting is empowered to help make the time as effective as possible. As such anyone in the meeting can call out a rathole regardless of the formal role assigned to them.
Once a rathole has been found, you may not want to immediately switch back to the agenda topic at hand. If the rathole is important to the meeting or your business, but simply isn't relevant to the agenda topic, the team should determine to add it to the bin list or decide how to address the topic so that it doesn't fall through the cracks. For example, if the agenda topic is related to the work to be done for the next release and the discussion veered over to begin talking about the latest support incidents related to database errors, this side discussion on support might still be important to the company. In this theoretical example, if this support incident is related to the meeting it might up on the bin list. Otherwise, maybe one of the attendees takes an Action Required or AR for short to further address this topic outside of the meeting with the company's support lead.
The other part of the referee role is helping to ensure that prior agenda topics aren't discussed again nor are future topics brought up before their time in the agenda. The referee will work collaboratively with the Time Keeper and Facilitator in order to collectively keep the meeting on track and on topic. But in this vein, just as the facilitator might call on attendees who have been silent in the meeting to get their input, the referee can also help to ensure all voices are heard and no single person or small handful of people dominate the discussion and the meeting.
By assigning and utilizing a referee in your meetings, you'll have someone assigned to help topics stay on track and callout when they go astray. Having a referee can be one of the most important actions you can take for your meetings, especially when attendees and even the facilitator can easily be distracted by other topics. By assigning someone to be the referee and help manage the topics discussed, you'll find your way towards success when running meetings.