Meetings, a powerful tool or a waste of time?

MEETINGS, purpose is to promote communication and productivity, exchange ideas, keep everyone informed and on track. But this is too good to be true! In reality, most of us we stuck at unnecessary unfruitful meetings, most of the time. We’ve all been there just waiting patiently for the meeting to finish so we can leave. How can we change this? How can we elevate the quality of our meetings and get the 100% of the benefits? By following some simple ground rules:

1. Agenda

Meetings should have a clear agenda that sets the clear objectives. Is the meeting informative, is it a workshop, is it to generate new ideas, to gather information, or to make decisions? Or it is a combination of the above? If you’re unsure what you’re trying to accomplish, you can be sure it won’t happen. The number one factor for a successful meeting is having a clear goal and a concrete agenda that will be sent to all participants prior to the meeting.

2. Participants

Clear objectives and solid agenda are leading to who should be invited?for providing real value and decision-making authority to the meeting. Ask yourself: Do all these people really need to attend the meeting? Most of the time, a brief summary by email will work just as well.

3. Duration

Good meetings start and end on time. Meeting must have a certain duration that should be respected. Having short meetings with no distractions like cell phones, is an essential component to improving meeting's efficiency. How long should be? Ideal meetings should be from 25 up to 55 minutes. It is important to understand engagement levels before determining the ideal length of a meeting. Research shows that the engagement level starts to reduce after 30 minutes. As the meeting continues after this point, the attention span decreases quite rapidly.

4. Facilitator

Effective meeting needs to have a facilitator to?effectively lead and drive the meeting. This requires one or more attendees to?take ownership?over ensuring that the meeting will cover all agenda items within the designated time period. Facilitator needs to understand the audience, focus on the agenda, create a "parking lot" for ideas that are useful but not relevant to the agenda and seek everyone's active participation

5. Minutes of Meeting

Very important task is to take?clear, accountable meeting notes, documenting decisions so there is no misunderstanding later. You want to document action items so you can hold people accountable and track progress. Clarify action items, specify the deliverables, assign a single owner to each item and agree on a due date. After the meeting, these meeting notes should be?shared with all attendees, via email. It’s important that the key decisions and a list of tasks, including who is accountable for what, are all included.