Today there was a great article in the Wall Street Journal by Sue Shellenbarger – Meet the Meeting Killers. In the article she identifies 5 personalities who can kill your meeting:
The article also includes some great tips on how to deal with these personalities.
In addition to these tips Sue also stresses the importance of an agenda, which I fully support…. and MeetingKing can help you with your next agenda.
Don’t like writing meeting minutes? You are not alone. Once you know a few tricks however, it is not that hard and with the right tool it is not a lot of work and will help you to get things done.
So why would you write meeting minutes? First, it adds structure to your conversation, keeps you focused and forces you to conclude each topic with a clear outcome. Second, it creates a clear record of what was discussed, what was decided and who is responsible. Third, no need to discuss the same issue multiple times (provided you can easily search your minutes). If you do not record your meeting, you might as well not have it.
Here are some simple tips and tricks to make it easier.
These rules apply regardless of the method you use to create your meeting minutes. MeetingKing makes writing minutes easier than using Word, email and a task manager. If you haven’t done so, watch the video how MeetingKing works at http://meetingking.com/tutorial-1-basics/
This weekend there was a great article on Lifehacker about writing in general “Write Less, Say More: The Power of Brevity”. I think this applies very much to meeting minutes.
I hope we are helping you to have more effective meetings.
Dedication is often measured in the number of hours people spend at the office, but research has shown over and over again that having a healthy balance between work and other activities leads to much higher productivity.
Problem with corporate America is that we are all looking at each other and consider face time to be the measure for commitment and often even success. Especially in larger organizations it is often hard to point out who contributed what. This makes it easy to hide behind the group if things don’t work out, but for a successful project it is also hard to point out who contributed most effectively. The easiest way then is to look at who spend the most time in the office……..
It is not about the number of hours you put into a project or you work, it is about the results you generate. Properly documenting your meetings, setting an agenda and distributing minutes, and having an easy to use team task list that tracks who does what and when, will help to move a project or organization forward AND will show who is actually delivering results. It is about getting things done, not about how much time you spend on it.
This week there was in interesting article on Inc.com Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week. This should be lesson for all of us. Work can be fun and interesting, but there is more to life than the office.
If you are a Google Apps user or system administrator you can now add MeetingKing to your business apps.
Google Apps keeps all your apps in one place and MeetingKing keeps all meeting information in one place!
Visit MeetingKing listing on Google Apps Marketplace
Meetings can often go off the agenda. Sometimes this is because a person wants to air their point of view with a forum. Other times it may be because an attendee has not understood the purpose of the meeting, and believes that their point is relevant. In other situations, going off subject may be caused by the meeting coordinator not keeping a tight rein on the meeting, and allowing people to get off the subject matter at hand.
Sometimes ideas that are raised during the course of a discussion are interesting and worthwhile to follow up, but are just not necessarily of direct use to the goals of the current meeting. Time and money can be wasted and participants get frustrated when meetings go off topic. It is important for those leading the meeting to be able to spot when this is happening and stop it. Having an agenda and sticking to it is essential for effective meetings.
With a parking lot, this can be easier to do. By adding a topic to the parking lot, the new (unrelated) subject will not be forgotten, as it is documented for discussion in the future. This reassures the person who raised the point that it will be dealt with, even if now is not the most appropriate time for such a discussion. It also allows the meeting coordinator to move swiftly on without appearing to be rude, or brushing aside a point that might be really important for a meeting participant (even if it is off-topic for the current meeting).
When considering using the parking lot for a meeting, it may be helpful to advise the meeting attendees up front that you are going to be doing so. This can be easily done by explaining that the meeting has a set amount of time assigned and so you plan to make sure that the agenda is stuck to. Let the participants know that if you feel they are going off on a tangent to the main thrust of the meeting, then their comments or points will be noted in the parking lot and will be addressed later. This may also serve the purpose of helping to keep the meeting on track at the outset, by demonstrating to participants that deviations from the main topics of discussion at the meeting will not be allowed.
MeetingKing provides built in Parking Lot functionality. With MeetingKing, adding an item to the Parking Lot is very simple – Just create a new topic in your agenda/minutes work space and drag it into the Parking Lot area. When preparing the agenda for a next meeting you just open the Parking Lot and drag the topic from the Parking Lot onto your new agenda.
Just because an item is added to the parking lot does not necessarily mean that it has to be discussed at another time. If the meeting participants get through the rest of the agenda and make all of the required decisions that are needed with time left over, there is no reason why the parking lot items for the meeting cannot be reviewed.
Another new feature to help you have a total overview. Most meetings cover different topics and it is always hard to get a quick overview of what is going on with each topic. Not anymore.
You can easily find any task related to the topic you are discussing without leaving your meeting space. Right next to the agenda and note taking area is a search box for related tasks. You can search by project, department, customer (based on tags) or by task owner. It will show all tasks you have to do or tasks others have to do for you.
I can see any tasks related to the current topic that were created in meetings I attended and other participants may see other related tasks that they discussed in meetings I did not attend. Because you have all information at your finger tips, your meetings will become much more useful.
Meeting facilitation is the art of making meetings run smoother. Meeting facilitators help meeting participants to stick to an agenda and progress through that agenda without getting stuck on difficult issues. It is the responsibility of the meeting facilitator to make sure that everyone gets an opportunity to contribute to the meeting, and meeting facilitation involves being responsible to everyone at the meeting, not just the person that asked for meeting facilitation.
One of the reasons for having a meeting facilitator is that sometimes it can be hard to come to a consensus when there are so many different and maybe conflicting points of view about a particular issue. Meeting facilitation can help groups of people to work through these issues to move forward and progress.
Meeting facilitation is not limited to simply introducing everyone at the meeting and asking for points of view from different people. Rather, meeting facilitation requires the facilitator to be able to think on his/her feet and come up with objective suggestions that help to smooth the way forward, especially when difficult decisions are being discussed. The best meeting facilitators may come from outside the department or team holding the meeting, but that is not necessarily the case. Either way, the meeting facilitation must be unbiased and performed by an individual that does not have a direct interest in the outcome of the meeting.
The meeting facilitator must understand and communicate the goal of the meeting at the outset. This will help the facilitator to steer the meeting towards reaching that goal. Throughout the meeting, the facilitator should have the end goal in mind, making sure that everyone is working towards that goal. If not, it is the job of the facilitator to get the meeting back on track, and/or bring it back to the agenda if it has strayed.
Meeting facilitation can work well with tools to keep it on track. With its built-in agenda, task allocation, minutes and parking lot, MeetingKing can be a useful tool for this purpose. A tool with an agenda helps the facilitator to coordinate the meeting and keep it on track, while directly after the meeting, minutes can be distributed to the attendees to remind them of any decisions and action items agreed to. Having a parking lot is particularly useful, as it allows facilitators to move particular issues to the side if they are not directly relevant to the outcome of the meeting, while ensuring that they do not get forgotten about.
Meeting facilitation can involve anything from guiding a discussion through to planning and structuring a meeting so that it will reach the desired outcome. To facilitate effectively, it is important that the meeting facilitator states the “rules” of the meeting at the outset. These may include not talking over one another, how to raise points, not going off track, or subjects that are not to be included, among others. If these rules are broken, the facilitator should not be shy about stepping in, as this will keep the meeting on topic.
Finally, with meeting facilitation it is important that everyone gets a chance to have their say. The facilitator should keep an eye on attendees to make sure that they are involved and included in the meeting. If they seem as if they are pulling back, it is the role of the facilitator to bring them back in again, perhaps by asking them what they think about a particular subject.
MeetingKing goes beyond traditional project management tools, which can only manage one project at the time. MeetingKing is like an accounting system for all your decisions and tasks of your meetings and conversations.
http://www.sociableblog.com/2012/03/16/meetingking-productive-meetings/
You asked, we listened. We have been working hard on some much requested features:
Meeting TemplatesIt has never been easier to prepare your meeting. When preparing the agenda (or starting the meeting…..), just click “Load template” and select one of the standard MeetingKing templates or one you created yourself. You can even load multiple templates.
Once a template is loaded, all items are just regular topics and you can modify the agenda as you see fit; you can delete topics, you can move them to a different location and you can add additional topics.
Saving templates is equally easy. If you have a meeting agenda/minutes structure you want to use for future meetings, just click “Save as template”, give it a name and save it. By default it will only save the Topics (and if provided the presenter and the time allotted), but you also have the option to include the Notes, Decisions and Tasks.
Templates are also great for a checklist or if you have multiple similar meetings where you want to ask the same questions, for example: personnel reviews, job interviews, etc. The possibilities for using meeting templates are limitless.
If you really think that your logo is nicer than the MeetingKing logo 
, you can now use that. Just navigate to the “Preferences” tab under “My Account” and upload your logo.
Your company logo will now be displayed on your browser window, on all email messages that go to you and the participants of meetings you organized and on the agenda and minutes documents.
Hybrid meetings are becoming more and more common in business. Hybrid meetings are when a combination of in-person and virtual elements are used to run the meeting. Hybrid meetings can be particularly useful for companies that have some employees that are teleworking, or people that are located in different places. In these situations some people will be in the meeting room, and others will be elsewhere and may use telephone conferencing, web conferencing or video conferencing tools to communicate with everyone. Such meetings can be challenging to manage especially since using visuals can be hard if not planned effectively. However these meetings have a great advantage in terms of cost, since they can mean that people do not necessarily have to travel to get to them.
One of the biggest challenges with hybrid meetings is that people tend to work on other tasks at the same time if they are not in the room with others. Morell (2010) states that 62% of people multitask during webinars. Getting the attention of everyone and keeping it is a skill that meeting organizers of hybrid meetings have to master. With meetings that are held using video conferencing technology this is somewhat easier, as it is possible to see what participants are doing to some degree, but with web conferencing it can be an issue. One way around this may be to agree a set of norms for all participants before the meeting, or to make a rule that people are not allowed to multitask during the meeting, even if they are not there in person. In fact, those that are not there in person have to pay even greater attention, arguably, since they are not able to see everything that is going on, or to pick up on body language.
One important aspect of successful hybrid meetings is to ensure that the technology works and brings people together effectively. There is of course the technology for communication (WebEx, GotoMeeting, phone and other conferencing systems), but technology to manage documentation is equally, if not more important.
It is essential that all participants have the same information before, during and after the meeting. Meeting facilitation tools like MeetingKing allow agendas, minutes and supporting materials to be easily shared between participants online, and allow tasks to be assigned and tracked. All this helps to support hybrid meetings by adding structure to make sure that everyone is “on the same page” following the meeting. Using technology means ensuring that everyone understands how it works and is sufficiently trained to be able to use it effectively.
Distributing documents during the meeting to the participants who are present is bad practice in general, as participants cannot prepare, but is even worse for the virtual attendees. Sending information during the meeting can lead to multitasking by those participants, leading to reduced attention and a less effective meeting overall.
Hybrid meetings can be very successful if planned and organized in an effective manner. They can also save the business money. Learning how to handle them effectively is an important skill that meeting organizers must develop.
