CSP S3 E2 - Roman Trebon - Never waste time again!

In this dynamic episode of the Customer Success Playbook, Roman Trebon shares essential strategies for maximizing meeting effectiveness in 2025. He addresses the common challenge of calendar congestion and provides actionable frameworks for ensuring meetings deliver real value. From implementing clear agendas to managing attendee lists strategically, Roman offers practical solutions to transform meeting culture and boost productivity.

Detailed Analysis

This episode delves deep into the transformation of meeting efficiency, a critical challenge facing business teams in 2025. Roman Trebon presents a comprehensive approach to meeting management that combines strategic planning with practical execution.

The discussion centers around several key principles:

1. Agenda-First Approach: Roman emphasizes the fundamental importance of having clear agendas before any meeting takes place. Without a defined purpose and structure, meetings risk becoming unfocused and unproductive.
2. Objective-Driven Framework: A noteworthy practice shared is the use of a simple yet powerful question: "How will I know when the objective of this meeting has been met?" This creates clarity and purpose for all participants.
3. Selective Attendance: The episode challenges the common practice of over-inviting participants to meetings. Roman advocates for a more targeted approach, ensuring only essential contributors are present.
4. Time Management Protocol: The discussion addresses the importance of staying on topic and managing meeting time effectively, including the need to park tangential discussions for separate conversations.
5. Standardized Meeting Frameworks: Roman proposes implementing consistent meeting structures across organizations to create predictability and efficiency.

The episode concludes with practical implementation strategies, including applying the "keep, kill, or start" framework to existing meeting schedules. This systematic approach helps teams eliminate unnecessary meetings while prioritizing those that deliver genuine value.

For business leaders and team managers, this episode provides actionable insights to transform meeting culture and reclaim productive time. The strategies presented are particularly relevant in today's hybrid work environment, where effective meeting management is crucial for maintaining team productivity and engagement.

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Transcript

CSP - S3 E2 - Roman Trebon - Meeting Efficiency
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the customer success playbook podcast. I'm your host. Kevin Metzger, and this is our second mini episode of the week with our guest Roman Trebon. On Monday, Roman shared his number one tip for preparing your team for success in 2025. Keep, kill, or start exercise. If you missed it, be sure to check out that episode.
Kevin Metzger: Today's Wednesday, and that means it's time for our one big question segment. Roman, welcome back. 
Roman Trebon: Yeah, thanks, Kevin. I'm glad to dive into this new format. I really enjoyed talking about the, the keep kill [00:01:00] start method on Monday and excited to dive into today's big question. 
Kevin Metzger: All right, Roman. Here's our one big question for the week.
How do you ensure meetings have clear objectives and real value? This is a challenge I hear for so many teams. Too many meetings, not enough action. What's your perspective? 
Roman Trebon: Kevin, I, this, this is a, such a priority for, for me this year in 2025. It is, you know, there were so many times last year I would look at my work calendar and it would be chocked full of back to back to back meetings all week, all day long.
And, you know, if you looked at where I could actually do productive work, In between meetings, it, you know, it was so frustrating because there was no time to actually get to the actual work because I was, my calendar looked like I had all of these meetings. Right. So did I need to be on all those meetings?
Did all those meetings have value? No, and I think this is why it's a really important exercise to make sure, really be clear on does your meeting have, you know, what is the objective of the meeting, right? And, and what is your role in the meeting? So, a couple of key things here for me, [00:02:00] Kev. I think one is your meetings, all meetings that you host, Or you attend, have to have an agenda.
If there's no agenda going into the meeting, then why are we meeting? I, how do you prepare for a meeting? Right. Going in, if you don't even know what we're talking about, that's like a huge pet peeve of mine. If I get a meeting and says it just has a subject line. Okay. Well, what do I, what are we talking about?
What are we trying to get out of it? So start with that clear agenda. I think that's, that's super helpful. Beginning the meeting, start with the objective. Okay. Right. Like, what are we trying to get out of this meeting? Right. There should be an objective. I talked to a guy over the holiday break, Kevin, we had breakfast.
Get a great tip. He has a little sticky note on his computer and says, how will I know when the objective of this meeting has been met? Right. He just has that little reminder on his computer screen. How will I know? That's a great, that's so great. And I said, I'm going to run home and I'm going to write my post it note because I want to have that.
Right, but you know, you have to know where you go, where, what are you trying to get to? Why are we meeting here in the first place? How do we know it's going to be [00:03:00] successful? Call it out up front. Make sure everyone's on the same page of what we're trying to get out of this. Big one here, Kev. Relevant attendees, okay?
So, you don't need to invite everyone to a meeting, alright? Who do you need on this meeting? To meet your objective, right? So frame it that way who needs to be on this call to meet the objective There's too many meetings i'm on where I have no role in the meeting I have no i've no i'll clearly say I have no rule.
I am just on the meeting. I'm not talking I'm, not adding value. It's you know, does it help me? Do I get understanding and do I learn more? Sure, but nowadays kev, I don't need to be on a meeting for that. We have the meetings get recorded There's transcriptions there's summaries I, you know, I, I would much, much rather get a transcript summary of a meeting where it gives me one paragraph on what the meeting was.
What was the objective? What's the next steps? You know, that's 5 minutes. I don't need to be on the meeting. You know, so, and I don't need to invite everyone on the meeting. Really think to yourself who needs to be on [00:04:00] to meet the objective, right? I think that helps. You know, if you're hosting the meeting, make sure you can keep keep the meeting on topic and manage the clock.
That's key. Too many times you get into a meeting, you get one person on the meeting that starts to go off the rail. They want to start talking about something else. You gotta, you gotta be, if you're hosting the meeting, really focus on that topic, okay? Put it in a parking lot, take it offline. And I, I don't love that scene to take it offline, but really, you know, that's where I like having the objective upfront, because if we're not talking about something, that's going to push that objective forward, it's not the place for it.
Right. And too many meetings I see I'm on. People get on there. And again, I'm not saying cut out all the pre meeting chitchat, but you know, if you have a half hour meeting, we can't be talking about the football games on Sunday until you know, 15 minutes in, we've already lost half the meeting. Right?
Get to the meeting. Right? The other thing is, I think as an organization, having consistent meeting frameworks, right, is really helpful because that way, if I go into a meeting with you, Kevin, or, you know, another colleague, It's the same format, the same structure, you know, it's not like the Wild West [00:05:00] each time I go to a meeting.
So, if you have a team, come up with a format, make sure someone has an agenda, make sure you have a timekeeper, make sure the host of that meeting is summarizing and sending out those meeting notes afterwards, right? I mean, that's the key. That's the other one thing, Kev, I'd say a big tip on meetings is, you know, take the time to write a quick summary.
And next steps, right? If you don't have that, there's too many meetings. It gets lost. Right? Who owns what? What came out of it? And then you're two weeks later. It's like, Oh, you know what? We're going to meet again. No, you don't have to meet again. We already met on this. Summarize it, put the action owners against it, give them timelines and let's move on.
Right? There's too many meetings that happened that I see. That it, the meeting happens and there's no follow up. And then we find ourselves in a place where that meeting has to, has to happen again. You know, on Monday, this episode real quick, real quick kept on Monday's episode, we, we started, we talked about to keep kill start framework, use that for your meetings, right?
Look at your [00:06:00] calendar, which one of these do you need to keep? You know which ones provide real value? Which ones do you gotta kill? . I tell you what, Kev, I did a lot of killing over the, over the holiday break, a lot of memes that do not add value. And then which ones do I start? And there were a few where, like, you know what I, I, now that I've eliminated some me from my calendar, there's definitely ones that could add more value to me in my team.
And so I'm gonna start those in the new. 
Kevin Metzger: Awesome room. What a great set of tips and great, great great thoughts. You know, 1 of the things I was thinking, as I'm listening to you about all the meetings and how you got there, we all have too many meetings. We all have too much. And I think 1 of the things that, has just been so, so useful. And you mentioned this that you now have the ability to record meetings and get transcripts and summaries and that can help you kind of not necessarily have to attend all the meetings that you were previously attending. But the other point that you made is like, you got to have meeting notes.
It's so easy to get meeting notes [00:07:00] now and you don't have to. And if you are in back to back meetings with so many of us are even even if you go through this process and kill half your meetings, you're still going to be in a ton of meetings and it's difficult if you've got a back to back meeting to go back and remember what happened if you're using the tools that are available to you now to record the meetings and then to help summarize.
You got to go back and read what the summary summarization is and make sure it's captured all of the action items that that you thought about. But there's 2 things that I think just are so important about having these tools 1. you don't necessarily have to be there writing everything down as you're listening and splitting your attention.
You can have your attention fully focused on the meeting. In if it's being recorded and allow you to be present and understand what's happening, which is so important to driving to your objectives in meetings. And then 2, you've got the automatic. You've got the automatic ability to generate your notes after the meeting.
And then what you're doing is you're spending your time. Reviewing them, making sure they're right, making sure they match what you remember if you if you're like, hey, there's something missing here and I think this happened [00:08:00] and you've recorded it. I mean, especially if you're using teams or something like that.
You have the ability to go back and say, I think this happened. Where did it happen? You can search the transcript. You can search the video. And, and find it and say, Oh, this was important. I want this included in here. And then either use Copilot to ask it to add it in, or just add it in manually yourself and take it out.
So I just, I think the key points that you're making on this are, are incredible and important. Is there anything else you want to add based off of where we're at? 
Roman Trebon: No, you've, you've teased our Friday episode though. So I'll let you get to it. 
Kevin Metzger: All right. Yeah. So Friday, we're going to talk about AI and how AI is relevant to this week and specifically how, how you're going to use AI is a customer success assistant.
And so thanks, Roman. It's incredibly useful advice. For those of you listening, give it a try in your next team meeting and see the difference it makes. [00:09:00] On Friday, we'll wrap up this three part series by talking about AI, as I was just saying, and talk about how ChatGPT can help with, with all this, help plan for team and customer success in 2025.
You won't want to miss it. Subscribe now, listen, comment. We'd love to hear from you. And until then, keep on playing.