Are you wasting too much time in too many meetings? You are not alone, 47% of office workers cite too many meetings as the main productivity problem at work. The last 2 years we have been forced to change the way we work and face-to-face meetings suddenly became remote meetings. Now many people are going back to the office, either full time or part time, but many others will continue to work remotely. Regardless of what format your meeting has, face-to-face, remote or a mix, the rules for having a productive meeting are the same.
Occasionally we will share an interesting article, that we believe can help you improve your meetings. We suggest you read this article from the Wall Street Journal “The science of better meetings”, and and share it with your team.
In most aspects of our lives productivity is increasing and processes are becoming more efficient or are automated. One area that does not seem to improve is meetings, in reality it is getting worse. Why is that and what can you do about it?
Of course the dynamics of a meeting is complicated, because you are dealing with people. For example if you invite someone to a meeting he/she may consider it a waste of time, but at the same time if you don’t invite that person, he/she may feel excluded. Some participants are very dominant and hijack the meeting, but have no detailed knowledge of the subject, while others are more timid and might actually be specialists in that area, but don’t speak up. Abolishing meetings is not a solution, we need them to coordinate, communicate and create a tight team.
We believe that having better meetings is not that hard, but it does require some attention, planning and thought and of course the use of MeetingKing as your digital assistant can help you a lot. As mentioned we suggest you read the article, but here are the highlights:
- Be critical about your own performance as a meeting leader. According to one survey, 79% of the people who organized and managed a meeting considered that meeting to be a success, but only 56% said so of meetings that were organized by someone else.
- Keep it small. Bain & Company found that meetings over 7 people become significantly less effective. Other research shows that larger meetings suffer from more counterproductive behavior and even interpersonal aggression.
- Keep it short. Why schedule an hour? Try to do it in less time. Less time forces you to wrap up each agenda item quicker and forces you to come to a decision and define an action plan. Of course MeetingKing can help, because it makes it so easy to mark items as a decision or to assign a task. If your meeting ends without decisions or action items, you could have sent an email instead of holding the meeting.
- Plan your meeting like you are planning an event. Set clear goals and key questions that need to be answered. MeetingKing can help by using one of the standard templates or your custom templates to start the agenda, but make sure to be critical and modify the agenda as required for that particular meeting. You should also ask other participants to contribute to the agenda, as that will increase engagement. Preparation by all participants is key. If there is no clear agenda with a clear goal, then simply cancel the meeting.
Happy Meetings!
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