Mark Kayser | CEO | Fluid | mail me |
It is widely accepted that meetings are the cornerstone of business collaboration but in their current form they can be in violation of common sense. They are probably the most broken process in today’s business world.
Although many meetings produce great outcomes, a lot of time is wasted in bad ones. If there is one positive outcome from this lockdown, it will be that most people have now realised the ineffectiveness of meetings.
Meetings are important, they provide opportunities to exchange ideas, discuss objectives and make decisions – with the goal of getting everyone on the same page and encouraging ongoing productivity. And therein lies the irony.
Unproductive meetings
Many professionals complain that meetings hinder their productivity. If speed is the new currency of business, why are we spending up to 50% of our time in unproductive meetings?
If one analyses the failures, it should be no surprise. Most meetings don’t have a clear purpose or shared agendas.
Minutes from the meeting are distributed late; information is scattered across various platforms like email, notebooks, documents and off-line action-trackers. The management and tracking of meeting outcomes can be challenging and time consuming.
So rather than clarifying what needs to be done and increasing productivity, they can lead to the opposite, uncertainty on what has been agreed and confusion as to what happens next. And then there’s the time wasted in between meetings, where we put work on hold and wait for the next meeting before we agree, approve or move work forward.
Old-school meeting formats
In today’s fast paced environment, people manage their work, family and personal lives on-the-go and from any location and device. Shouldn’t meetings naturally follow suit?
Employees need to be able to constantly action and move projects forward rather than being hindered by the constraints of old-school meeting formats.
We understand the importance and purpose of meetings, to bring people together and move the business forward.
Saving time
When scheduling a meeting, most people don’t give too much consideration to how long it really should be, they normally use the default of 30 minutes or one hour.
Are default meetings the biggest productivity fail of the 21st century? Especially when studies show that shorter purpose-driven meetings generally result in better outcomes and faster decision-making.
For this reason, one needs a solution that helps you to stay on point and keep your meetings focused.
Less email
On average, about 40% of email traffic is generated by meetings. One can liberate your inbox and keep the conversation and feedback in a solution.
Not only does this keep all conversation contextual, but also keeps it visible to everyone, so all meeting members are on the same page.
Visibility
It’s not easy to stay on top of who needs to do what and by when, especially when your team works remotely.
We can show exactly what each team member is committed to across their projects and meetings. We take the meeting out of the office and into your pocket, enabling you to meet and work no matter where your attendees are.
Accountability
You know you’re in a good meeting when everyone has a clear understanding of the objectives and required actions, we call this a purpose-driven meeting.
There is total transparency and therefore accountability across the whole team. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do and any pressure points, should they arise, can be resolved quickly with meeting management tools.
In conclusion
Normally only around 50% of actions from a meeting are completed on time. There are solutions that provide meeting analytics to help members achieve around 80% of their actions on time.
It ensures that everyone is on the same page, there’s total transparency. It also ensures complete accountability as everything is right there.
So don’t let meetings get in the way of productivity. There are solutions that make sure your meetings are the foundation to success.
