The New York Times recently profiled technology’s “it” girl, Google Vice President, Marissa Mayer. I interviewed Mayer for my new book, Fire Them Up. Here is the transcript from a portion of our interview where she reveals Google’s secrets for conducting an effective meeting.
 

Marissa, I heard you conduct 70 meetings a week. Is that accurate?

My day is made up of meetings, from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm. I’m in executive meetings with Sergey [Brin] and Eric [Schmidt] as well as product meetings. It’s a crazy meeting schedule. But in product management, especially at Google, the work happens in the meetings. It’s how we get things done.

What is your strategy for conducting effective meetings?

First, always have a firm agenda upfront. Even for members of my team, I request a firm agenda the day before. It should outline what they want to talk about, the best way of using that 30 minutes of time. The agenda is a tool to force people to think about what they want to get out of the meeting.

Secondly, have a good note-taker. We have two projectors, one for the presentation and the other for note-taking. We’re big believers in taking notes during the discussion- action items and inaccuracies can be caught right there on the spot.

Thirdly, I have large blocks of time that are made up of up micromeetings. Sometimes people only need five minutes of my time. For example, I also hold office hours. First come, first serve. There’s a waiting area outside my office and my team members put their names on a whiteboard to schedule a short meeting. Sometimes project managers need approval on a marketing campaign, or to talk design or demo a prototype. My “office hours” are held from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m. Many of our most interesting products have shown up during office hours.

What is your goal from a meeting?

My goal is to make sure the team leads with a firm direction and mandate, that they feel motivated, and well respected. It’s also my goal that we’re headed in the right direction, that a project makes strategic sense.

What do you mean by “discouraging politics” in a meeting?

That’s one of my nine tenants of innovation. In design organizations, it’s common that people feel as though there is a lot of favoritism. At Google, we make design a science. We pick designs based on a clearly defined set of metrics and how well each design performs along those metrics. We put both designs on the site for a small subset of users and measure them and make decisions purely alongside those objective metrics. It’s a neutralizing factor. Designs get chosen by merit, evidence and data not relationships.

For example, in our user interface review, we want people to say, “the experimentation on the site shows that this design performed 10% better.” Back it up by data that is objective and quantitative. It’s different that saying, “I really like the screen.” That’s subjective and leads to a political environment. Striving to keep your bias and personal subjective opinion to yourself helps build a culture driven by data and analytical skills.

And finally, tell me about that 15-minute countdown clock you project on the wall during meetings?  

It’s important that things run on time. We want people to feel some pressure that they are on time and hitting the key issues. We use downloadable clocks that you can run on your computer. It ticks down from 15 minutes and is projected on the wall for all to see. It’s funny because we have screens projecting the design, another projecting the notes, another projecting the larger than life clock! We have a healthy sense of humor about it.

Thank you, Marissa. Great insights.