#2: Five ways to make meetings more productive
$37 billion. That’s quite a number. That’s the amount of money that is wasted every year (in the US only) due to unproductive meetings. Furthermore, there are 11 million meetings happening every day, again in the US only. This means, that we are having tons of meetings and loosing tons of money at the same time. Further research shows that the length and also frequency of meetings has increased in the past 50 years and we all might know the feeling of being too busy in having too many meetings. However, in this post I am not looking at the amount of meetings but I rather want to focus on those $37 billion which are wasted due to unproductive meetings. I was wondering how might we use the time in meetings more efficient?
I would like to introduce you to different tools which you can use in your meetings to make them more productive, doesn’t matter if you’re physically in the same office or working remotely. You can mix and match these tools based on the needs and requirements for your meetings.
Check-in/Check-out: Check-ins can be used as a starter to kick-off a session. You can use check-outs to recap and close a meeting. It is essential to let people know why you are doing a check-in since they are used for a purpose. It is necessary to spend time to craft a question which serves this purpose so you won’t waste any time. You can use different check-in questions based on the purpose, e.g. to get to know each other but also to open up the topic for the meeting. If you feel like you need more inspiration finding the right check-in/check-out question, you can use tools such as tscheck.in. After you found the right question, you do a round (rounds are explained here) and let everyone share. This practice invites everyone to speak up which makes it easier for folks to speak up later again.
IDOARRT: This is a tool to which I was introduced during my time at Hyper Island. IDOAART helps participants to better understand what the purpose of this meeting is and what the ground rules are. The acronym IDOARRT stands for: Intention, Desired Outcome, Agenda, Rules, Roles, Time. When kicking off a meeting, you can go through these sections to explain participants what they can expect. It is frustrating leaving a meeting and thinking that this meeting was simply a waste of time, therefor as the meeting host, make sure that you communicate the intention of the meeting but also the desired outcome to the meeting participants. Furthermore, explain the agenda of the day and the roles and responsibilities. Regarding the rules, make sure to collaborate on these and make a decision together. Last, breaks are important. Research shows that after 90 minutes on a topic our brains need a break, so don’t forget about these when scheduling a longer meeting or workshop.
Setting the agenda: There are different options how you can define the agenda for your meeting. Samantha Slade, author of Going Horizontal states that there are three options how to define the items of an agenda: Agenda items 1) that recur 2) that are set prior and 3) that are set during the meeting. You can set them up in advance but you can also use an emergent agenda at the beginning of your meeting. In this case, everyone writes in a shared document what they would like to discuss in the meeting. In the next step, you all go through the list and define what are the priorities, what needs immediate feedback. Then you work through this list of topics step by step.
Shared Document: Using shared documents, especially when working remotely but also when being in the office, is essential to make it visual for everyone what is discussed and how the meeting progresses. Open a shared document and share the link with the participants of the meeting. You can either dedicate a scribe and/or you can collaborate in this document together. It’s simple yet powerful. A shared document encourages everyone to be interactive and to contribute. After the meeting, the link is accessible to everyone, also for the ones who missed the meeting. There is no additional time needed to recap the meeting and folks don’t have to ask someone to send the notes through. Win-win.
Rule of Two Feet: It’s simple: If you feel like you cannot contribute to a meeting or if you feel like the information shared is not super important for you, just leave the meeting. When working remotely it can be changed to “Rule of One Click” - with one click you’re out. Another option would be to break out into subgroups, sometimes it’s just not efficient when too many cooks are in the kitchen. When being in our daily work we tend to forget that we have the option to leave the meeting and to just read the meeting notes afterwards. Don’t be afraid to do so.
Benjamin Franklin already wrote in 1748: “Remember that time is money.” Let’s spend our time wisely and make meetings more productive! And, as always, I’m happy to get feedback, cat content or any suggestions for future topics. Drop me a line!