Planning Your Next Remote Meeting
Meeting bloat is a real issue facing businesses in the post-pandemic world. The overwhelming feeling of having too many meetings is a universal complaint I hear from team members and corporate executives. Two additional problems seem to have surfaced as well: why I am here? And what’s the point of this meeting?
If you are leading meetings, it is important you do not create unnecessary meetings, and colleagues don’t leave asking those two questions.
First step in having a meeting is deciding if you should hold a meeting. A few questions to ask, and if the answer is no to any of them don’t hold a meeting, do the needed work first!
Do I have a handle on the situation and know what I need from others?
If no, complete pre-work and more strategic thinking is needed
Do I need outside input for progress?
If no, schedule time to complete work to point of needing to start collaborating
Do we need a real-time conversation for progress?
If no, send an email
If you answered the preceding questions with yes, you need to be mindful in setting up the meeting so that it can be productive. Set objectives, take a less is more mindset, and set an agenda.
Setting objectives
Before meeting, determine what are the objectives for meeting?
Is the meeting for information sharing?
Will you be using it to make decisions?
Is the meeting to help with relationship building/networking?
Is it some combination of the these objectives?
Finally, what actionable items are expected by the end of the meeting?
Less is more
Adopt a less is more mindset with meetings, less time higher quality, research finds fatigue and lack of focus sets in after 45 minutes. Reduce time to increase quality, less is more!
Reduce the number of people in a meeting, only invite essential colleagues and articulate the reason why they need to be included.
Don’t invite people without understanding how their involvement is directly linked to goals of meeting
Change standard meeting times
30 minutes to 25 minutes
60 minutes to 50 minutes
Start with 25-minute meetings as default
Assess current standing meetings on 2 dimensions, possibly reduce weekly meetings to less frequent:
Effort to prepare for meeting.
Value of meeting in helping reach personal, team, corporate goals.
Agendas
All agendas are not created equal nor effective, and most agendas don’t add to the productivity of the meeting. Process-based agendas are less effective then sticking to meeting start and stop times. Outcome-focused agendas are more effective and can increase productivity.
Outcome-focused best practices:
Outcome-focused agenda, answers these questions:
Make the meeting title a question: What question or issue do you want to tackle?
Why have this meeting? What do you want to accomplish?
What do you need to cover to achieve goal?
Who needs to be involved to achieve goal? Start with the minimum necessary!
Share agenda a few days prior to meeting, and ask for feedback.
Next month, we will discuss how to hold productive remote meetings!
