Quantcast
Channel: Connected Life » How To
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

8 Tips for Making Meetings More Efficient

0
0

Meetings can be one of the biggest productivity drains for both you and your business. According to the National Statistics Council, every day approximately 11 million meetings are held in the US which is the equivalent to 37% of employee time. Moreover, out of meeting attendees surveyed, 91% admit to daydreaming during meetings, while 39% have admitted to dozing off.

Rather than blaming the meetings, however, here are seven great tips on how you, as the meeting organizer, can run a more efficient meeting.

8 Tips for Making Meetings More Efficient


Image source: bade_md

1. Set and communicate clear goals for the meeting

What are your goals for the meeting? Set and communicate clear goals for the decisions or actions that need to come out of the meeting. Make sure this is included inside of the meeting invite, as well as re-iterated at the start and throughout the meeting. If you expect participants to prepare or present anything, communicate that in advance and make your expectations clear.

2. Invite the right people

Make sure the right people are in the room, and no more than that. These are the people who directly contribute to the meeting goals. As a meeting organizer, do not invite people who are only useful for reference information. Do the information gathering up-front via email or one-on-one conversations.

3. Avoid the large marathon meeting

Meeting inefficiency primarily stems from two limiting factors: length of time and size of meeting. If your meeting covers too many topics, break it into smaller meetings with clearly defined goals. If your meeting has too many people, consider separating it into multiple small group meetings. No one likes to be in a hot room full of people where the vast majority of the content covered is not relevant.

4. Take care of the pre-work

Consider the goals of your meeting. If there are any decisions that need to be made, make sure you have all of the available data with which to make it. Anticipate and prepare before a meeting, to ensure you don’t end up deferring decisions due to lack of information. This includes distributing information beforehand, or even printing out available materials for people to review.

5. Always have an agenda, and take notes

In your meeting, have a short agenda to make sure everyone understands what will be covered during the course of the meeting. This is a great time to communicate the goals of the meeting as well as make sure everyone understands the key decisions or actions that should take place after a meeting.

6. Close the laptops

In the time period of a meeting, participants should be engaged and participating. If they’re not, this can contribute to waste as they need to re-orient and get up to speed on the top being discussed. Or, they simply don’t contribute and would have been more productive back at their desk. Was the meeting too long for their schedule? Or perhaps they should not have been invited to the meeting in the first place?

7. Make sure someone is in charge

Always try to make sure that there is someone in charge of the meeting at all times to keep the group focused. This person can also try to make sure each person has the opportunity to contribute, and help the meeting stay on track.

8. Send follow up notes

After the meeting, make sure to send follow up notes. The notes should cover the items discussed, the decisions made, as well as any follow-up items which need to be completed from the meeting. Always try to ensure that each follow-up items has a specific owner so it doesn’t get dropped.

Enjoy this post?

Subscribe to Connected Life, follow @connectedhq on Twitter for more professional productivity tips like this, or learn how Connected can help you manage your contacts.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 10

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images