If you’ve ever worked in a corporate or government environment, you know full well the impact of meetings on your ability to use time wisely.
Even the Microsoft Outlook calendar defaults to one hour when you set up calendar invites.
There are a ton of resources out there about meetings – agendas, what to dos and what not to dos, etc. Yet, meetings continue to suck the time and inspiration out of people.
Just a few tips if you are planning a meeting this week:
- Agenda – make one. Search Google for “agenda templates” and you will find plenty of examples.
- Try 30 minutes – instead of defaulting to an hour, plan for 30 minutes.
- Read Ahead and Action Ahead– give the attendees the notes, slides, action items, etc. before the meeting and make them deliverables for the meeting. Cancel the meeting if you find out ahead of time that people won’t be prepared.
- Post action items and notes in a shared space– whether it is Google Docs, a Facebook Group, SocialText or something else – get what was discussed and agreed to out there for all to see. Plus, this assumes that you took the steps during the meeting to assign action and follow-up dates.
More meeting ideas?
