We all know how important meetings are. But then, we also know about several hours that go wasted in meetings each month. If we only look back to last week, many of you would be astonished, frustrated and depressed to know how much of the time you spend in bad meetings. While there is no way to get back hours wasted in meetings or setup a foolproof method to ensure meetings turn out productive each time, here are some ways in which you can help fuel productivity through meetings.
There are mounting evidences from scores of researches that suggests most creative insights and greatest discoveries results from regularly scheduled meetings. The success of meetings depends on everyone’s involvement. It is important that colleagues and business associates use meetings to connect and share their work, insight, setback and work on the creativity produced by the team. Here are some tips to help you make your meetings great and much productive.
Send agenda in advance
As a matter of fact you may not reach anywhere in life if you have no sense of direction, meetings are no different. So before you call people for meetings, give them a heads up of what is going to be covered. Sending the meeting agenda 24 hours in advance gives people time to prepare and make the most of the time.
Start meeting on time
If you don’t start your meetings on time, you won’t be able to end it on time, which means, your next meeting is going to start late and consequently your entire day is going to fall off schedule. When you start meetings on time and end it on time, you inadvertently help set up a culture where people’s time I highly valued.
Meeting should involve right people
Have you ever been part of meeting that was literally standing room only? Meetings should have right purpose and involve right people. Everyone in the meeting should have a clear role and purpose in the meeting.
Meetings should be of right length
If you organize a meeting which you thought would take 60 minutes, but ended up wrapping it in just 28 minutes – great. Meetings should always be as long or as short as it needs to be.
Every meeting should end with an action items
Before you end the meeting, give a recap for any immediate actions and ensure it is assigned to the right owners. The worse that can happen with a meeting is that nobody followed and then you organize another meeting to discuss all over again what you have already discussed.