The IEP Learning Academy Podcast

Optimise Your Meeting Productivity

Brought to you by Assemble You.

Today, you'll learn to optimise your meeting productivity and eliminate wasted time and
inefficiency.

While teamwork and collaboration are essential aspects of business and professional
development, surveys have found that meetings can be the number one time-wasting
activity at work.

We'll look at ways to reduce the number of meetings you have and how you can build
meetings that have actionable outcomes. You'll also learn to manage the pre-meeting
preparation and post-meeting follow-up process better.

To be productive with your time, you need to optimise various processes, including
meetings.

With various parties involved, it's easy for agendas to be hijacked and meetings to
meander into a range of topics not agreed upon for discussion. Good people
management skills are critical for optimising meeting productivity. Having a good grasp
of meeting technology and audiovisual tools will also help ensure your tech is set up
correctly and the meeting will run smoothly without disrupting attendees' schedules.
***
Mastering the skills you need for more productive meetings will be better for your
business and add another vital skill that will help you achieve more in your career.
No matter your industry, it's likely that you're used to having a lot of meetings, and you
may even find the number of sessions you have to attend demotivating.

As Jason Fried, founder of software company 37signals and co-author of the
international bestseller REWORK, says:
Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured
recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy
morale and motivation.
***
The first step to optimising meeting productivity is to cut out the ones that don't need to
happen in the first place. So, how do you manage the number of meetings you need
each week?

According to a Clarizen/Harris poll, the average American worker spends 4.5 hours per
week in general status meetings. They also spend even more time - up to 4.6 hours -
merely preparing for this type of meeting.

In her YouTube video on Efficient Meetings, Adriana Girdler - TED Talk speaker and
Chief Efficiency Officer at Cornerstone Dynamics - advises that the best way to get
more productivity from meetings is to keep them strictly for when an action is required.
***
Status and update meetings often don't require people to gather together. Girdler
advocates eliminating them and using technology for meeting updates instead. For
example, that could mean emailing or using group chats to communicate team updates.
Meetings themselves are not the only problem. There's also the preparation for the
meeting and the post-meeting activity. You can use a few techniques to optimise all
three stages of the meeting process: Preparation, meeting, and follow-up. Here are a
few tips for each phase to help you get the most out of your available time.

Meeting Preparation: Be prepared so you don't need to leave the meeting because you
forgot something. It will kill momentum, and the concentration of attendees will wander.
Ensure the tech is working before the meeting starts because if your meeting gets
delayed, then other deadlines could be missed. Multiple people’s time will be wasted
waiting for it to be fixed.
***
To get the most out of meetings, you must be intentional about the purpose and what
you are trying to achieve. As Chris Fussell, co-author of the 2015 New York Times
bestseller Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, says :

As a leader, you must consistently drive effective communication. Meetings must be
deliberate and intentional - your organizational rhythm should value purpose over habit
and effectiveness over efficiency.

Once you know the meeting's purpose and desired outcome, you can use that
knowledge to optimise the content to get your desired result.

Meeting optimisation: To optimise the meeting and ensure it stays aligned with your
goals, you should create an agenda. That will stop the conversation from getting
sidetracked and prevent time from being drained discussing topics different from those
intended for that session.

***

An agenda should include the following components:
● Item
● Desired Outcome
● Priority
● Time
● Who
● How

Planning an agenda will provide a clear workflow for each item and assign
responsibilities and deadlines with delivery methods. A schedule should save time for all
meeting participants by providing a clear set of topics, objectives, and time frames.

Even with an agenda, people can still walk away from meetings uncertain of the action
points. At the end of the meeting, it's an excellent idea to reemphasise the tasks and
action points, recapping what you have agreed on and what responsibilities people are
taking away to work on. Assigning a time and date deadline is an excellent way to
ensure that the task is monitored and followed up upon.

Unfortunately, sometimes an agenda alone is not enough to keep the meeting
participants in check and on topic. It's good practice to apply a set of meeting rules.
That lets participants know what is expected of them. You can put posters up in each
meeting room (or send details via email) with a list of meeting rules, expectations and
etiquette.

One person should also act as the meeting facilitator and implement the agenda and the
rules to ensure things run smoothly.
***
Meeting follow-up strategies: Post-meeting follow-ups can be time-consuming. It's a
good idea to send out a summary after the meeting to other attendees so it stays fresh
in their minds. To do this, you need a system to take notes and format the details of the
meeting as you work through it so it becomes easy to follow up post-meeting.
Software tools can assist you in automating part of this job and increase your
productivity.

For example, Microsoft Office 365 for Business lets you send meeting notes directly to
attendees. You could use the meeting notes option in Outlook to take notes for yourself
and share them with other attendees.

Other meeting attendees may add to your meeting notes, making it easy for your team
to provide a comprehensive account of what occurred during the meeting, which you
can then use to manage assigned tasks. Your staff might also appreciate that the
follow-up is carried out in their preferred method. As Marillyn Hewson, strategic advisor
to the CEO of aerospace and defense manufacturing company Lockheed Martin says:

You can't forget that organizational success flows from the hearts and
minds of the [people] you lead. Rather than treating your people as you'd
like to be treated, treat them as they would like to be treated. Small
gestures like opting for face-to-face meetings or sending personal notes
can have an enormous impact on teams and their morale.
***
We've explored the challenges of managing meetings between team members. We’ve
examined minimising discussions that don't need to happen that may harm staff morale.
We've also looked at ways to optimise the preparation of meetings to avoid delays. For
meeting management, we've discussed ways you can manage the flow of the meeting
with an agenda and a set of rules to which all participants agree to adhere.

Post-meeting follow-ups are essential and can be automated thanks to tools that
increase productivity and ensure meeting participants are clear on their objectives.
This week, take some time to go away and think about the types of meetings you hold
or attend each week. Does each of these meetings have a valid purpose? Do they feel
deliberate? Could they be eliminated or improved for better productivity?

That's all for today. Thanks for listening.