7 Top Tips to Consistently Productive Meetings
Mastering meeting productivity at work is a constant struggle. The outcome of meetings can be hard to predict and a strict structure is even harder to adhere to. In our research looking into the best meeting productivity tips available, we found The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings, by Eli Mina, which had some unique insights into how we can transform our unproductive meetings into effective tools of progress.
Below, we’ve outlined 7 great tips described from the book that have helped us transform our meetings and we hope will help you as well.
1. Clarity of Mandate, Purpose, Issues, and Process
When working in meetings, the purpose of the team and of the meeting must be clear. If the meeting’s purpose is not in line with its intended goal, then teams will gain nothing by holding the meeting. One way to enforce the purpose of the meeting is to state explicitly the purpose of each meeting before it begins, ensuring that each team member is aligned to a common goal. On an individual meeting basis, the issues discussed must be clear and understood by the decision-makers. One way to make sure that the issues are known is to create an agenda and to make a copy for each member.
2. Order and Decorum
Controlling the order in a meeting is easier said than done. Overall, there must be a few requirements in place for the participants. First, each member should be able to speak without interruption. Second, each member should be respectful to his or her peers. Having a history of respect and trust in a team is the number one indicator of the success of that team. Maintaining order and respect in meetings can take your team to the next level and push innovation more rapidly.
3. Productivity and Forward Movement
“A good meeting moves forward at an appropriate pace allowing the members to make timely progress along a predefined agenda. … The general premise is that time is money and meetings are expensive.” (37)
To increase the productivity of a meeting many steps can be taken beforehand. One of these steps is making an agenda that is well structured to keep the discussion on track and moving forward. During the meeting recording, all the action items and decisions can lead to an improvement in productivity as each member won’t be lost afterwards.
4. Flexibility and Creative Thinking
Sometimes in a meeting, you need to break out of the usual routine to have a creative exercise with your team. Coming up with innovative solutions to problems cannot simply be solved by implementing more order, but must come from a different perspective. To create an environment where creativity is desired, loosening the agenda and its structure can let the discussion flow and more ideas can be entertained. In extreme cases, having completely unstructured conversations for a set time has the potential to produce the best ideas.
5. Informed Decision Making
“The success of a meeting is ultimately measured by the quality of decisions made in it.” (41)
Making decisions as a team has no standard template for success but can often be the most critical action the team makes. There are a few steps that can be taken to prevent some poor decisions from being made. Distributing documents before a meeting can prevent members from making uninformed decisions. Additionally, allowing for enough discussion time around each decision point can give each participant time to voice their opinions and discover new ideas.
6. Openness, Listening, and Collaboration
“If time is to be spent in a meaningful way and if the debate is to stand a chance of truly making difference, members must come to the meeting with an open mind.” (43)
Openness, listening, and collaboration are the three elements that separate working in a team vs. working alone and they are the three elements that can make teams more effective than the individuals that make up them. However, occasionally, there are a few individuals that can hinder the meeting for everyone else. Having an intervention with these people can help keep future meetings on track and can lead to more open meetings.
7. Balance, Inclusion, and Equality
“Hoping for equal participation in a meeting is laudable, but hope alone won’t do it. Concrete steps must be taken to achieve balanced participation, or else the most outspoken, assertive, or knowledgeable members will dominate.” (45)
Having a balanced discussion can be the factor that makes or breaks a team. If each team member doesn’t have the opportunity to raise their opinion then they can be discouraged from working on the project and ultimately lower team deliverables. One interesting remedial technique is to have meetings for different subsets of the team and vary their activities based on what makes them most comfortable.
A key takeaway from all of this is that finding a repeatable and simple structure for your meetings can reap great rewards with even a small amount of time invested. For example, if you put together a reusable meeting minutes template where you outline the meeting’s purpose, agenda, and expected outcomes, you can save hours and hours of time in the future by simply taking 3 minutes before the meeting to fill out your template and storing your minutes in an accessible place. Similarly, if you actively strive to include everyone in your discussions, you can innovate more consistently and discover ideas that may be game-changing for your project!
If you found this article interesting, we have 3 additional tips to round out the list on the extended version of this blog post here — which you are welcome to check out if you are looking for even greater gains in productivity.
Otherwise, stay tuned for regular updates and helpful tips about how to improve your productivity at work!
Source:
“The Ten Key Ingredient of a Successful Meeting.” The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings, by Eli Mina, AMACOM, 2000.
