Meetings Mania

You have a deadline approaching fast and you’ve a 2-hour meeting scheduled for the afternoon. Worse still, the company chatterbox is among the attendees listed on the agenda. Does this sound familiar? Or how about the “regular” meetings where you thoroughly enjoy meeting colleagues face-to-face but leave empty handed. Are we a generation of meeting-o-philes (people who love meetings) or is it simply that we crave getting together but need to formalize it?

How can we make meetings more effective? A few favourites I’ve picked up from colleagues and corporate clients:

1. Restrict meetings to 30 minutes. This was the practice of a company involved in the Osake project who had incredibly effective meetings.
2. Have informal meetings. The corporate teaching team at TUAS had a Pizza at noon concept, which meant enjoying Pizza on the first Monday of every month together. Completely voluntary, always a great turn out, sharing of ideas, peer support etc.
3. Use a tool like www.titanpad.com during the meeting so that people can type their comments or questions during the meeting and the chair can decide if they are relevant (also great as a backchannel for a presentation or for getting individuals or groups to brainstorm on the same document – even if they are in different locations.
4. Have a telephone or video conference – quick, easy, allows multitasking and also can record the session as a video minutes.

How about you? What are your suggestions for making meetings most effective?


- Kelly Raita -