The Tricks To Making Every Meeting Productive

Adriana Girdler

Meetings that don’t waste your workday In 2012, Salary.com surveyed more than 3,200 people about wasting time at work. Respondents named “too many meetings” as …

Meetings that don’t waste your workday

Meeting tricks for productivityIn 2012, Salary.com surveyed more than 3,200 people about wasting time at work. Respondents named “too many meetings” as the number-one time wasting culprit, up from the third spot in 2008. Unproductive meetings are a deadly drain on our time!

When you ask people about the meetings they attend at work, most professionals admit they have a tendency to miss meetings (or at least parts of them). They admit that they bring other work to meetings (and that’s so easy now, when everyone has a laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone.) Sometimes they just daydream or doze!

With so much time spent in meetings, employees have less time to get their own work done; meanwhile, ineffective meetings make people think they need to meet more often to get their tasks done. The cycle of unproductive meetings costs organizations millions of dollars in employee work time.

One of the causes: Many meetings are only update sessions on topics that are better handled with an email. A truly efficient workplace meeting should have an action that comes out of it. Attendees want to resolve something during their meeting, and each one should end with a record of four items: 1. What was resolved; 2. Action items to be done; 3. Who’s going to do each action item; and 4. A due date.

As an experiment, try designating one day per week as a no-meetings day. Or, see whether you can shorten all meetings by just 15 minutes, or declare one full month when no meeting can last more than  60 minutes… and then decrease that to 45. Another idea to challenge your team to keep the meeting short and sweet is to ask everyone to stand for the duration.

Two critical tools for productive meetings are the Time Out and the Parking Lot. The Time Out allows anyone in the group to stop a discussion to check whether it’s pertinent to the agenda. The Parking Lot is the list of items that may arise, but which don’t fit the current agenda. They’re recorded to be dealt with (soon) at another time.

Meeting Dos and Don’ts

  • DON’T call a meeting unless you have a good idea of what you want to accomplish in it.
  • DO make sure all meetings are designed to resolve something specific.
  • DO cancel the meeting if key decision makers can’t be present.
  • DON’T try to fit more than three to five items on your agenda.
  • DO ban electronics at meetings (except for the note-taker).
  • DO distribute the agenda, minutes and any other pertinent documents well ahead of time.

This post is taken from my book, Take Back Your Day! To read more from the book, visit our Product Page. For even more meeting tips, read my book Good Meetings = Great Results!

 

How do you make your meetings productive? Thanks for reading don’t forget to share/tweet/like our blog just underneath this paragraph. And don’t forget, we’re always here to help with your business efficiency needs.

Thanks For Sharing!

Photo of author

Adriana Girdler is a project manager, productivity specialist, entrepreneur, professional speaker, facilitator, visioning wizard, and author. As President of CornerStone Dynamics, Adriana is one of Canada’s prominent business productivity and project management specialists—helping both individuals and businesses do what they do, only better. She is a certified master black belt lean six sigma with over 20 years’ experience improving how companies work.

She also holds both PMP (project management professional) and CET (certified engineering technologist) designations. She’s a Tedx speaker, as well as a HuffPost and Thrive Global contributor. She has been interviewed on Global, CBC, CTV, CHCH, 680News Radio, Newstalk 1010, Sirius XM and published in the Globe and Mail and numerous industry magazines. WANT ADRIANA'S FREE ONLINE TRAINING? In 45 min, learn Adriana's 5 project management secrets she use on EVERY project. Sign up for the Free Webinar here: THE FAB FIVE FUNDAMENTALS OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

SLAY Project Management

Online Course

5 Sections and 24 step-by-step HOW TO Videos! The only 5-hour on-line course that teaches you the PRACTICAL side of project management. This course will guide you step-by-step on HOW to successfully run a project and provides you with all the templates and tips you need to be successful.

Fab 5 Fundamentals

Free Training

Are you striving for successful projects, but get overwhelmed figuring out what elements of project management to focus on for the best results? In the Fab Five Fundamentals of Project Management, you’ll learn the five things you need to do on EVERY project to bring it to success.

Why Projects Fail?

Free Download

If you're new to projects or need a refresher, here's a guide of all the things I learned during my journey. Project success is about knowing how to navigate and stay clear of roadblocks, issues and problems. Understand the top 10 reasons why projects fail and how to avoid them.

Interested In Working Together?

We are business productivity experts. Contact us to learn how we can help your business become more efficient and increase profitability.

Join Our Newsletter

Join over 30,000 subscribers. Get the latest and the best in project management information delivered straight to your inbox.

Follow Us