Running effective meetings

Today employees attend more meetings than ever due to the development of new online collaboration tools, and the increasing trend of virtual or hybrid ways of work as an impact of Covid-19. Also, we cannot deny that meetings fulfill a deep human need. Man is a social species.

We also, cannot deny that time is money. Certainly, a great many meetings waste a great deal of everyone’s time. Having meetings all day leads to falling behind on work. Based on the research and statistics:

? The average employee spends up to a ?????????? ???? ?????? ???????????????? in meetings! The higher the seniority, the more meetings an employee has. Senior roles spend more than 50% of their time on meetings

? Almost half of the people complained that meetings wasted their time the most at work!

? In the United States, for example, an estimated $37 billion is lost per year to unproductive meetings (with 55 million meetings held each week)

It's not so hard to ?????????????????? ?????? ???????? of unproductive meetings. You just need to multiply the sum of attendees' hourly rates by the duration of the meeting. If you add here the time spent on the meeting preparation, and finding a suitable time slot for every participant, the impact of unproductive meetings will grow even more.

???????? ?????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????????????? ?????????????????

1. ???? ?????????????? ???? ???????? ???? ?????? ?????????????? - people often schedule meetings because of other meetings as a follow-up or action points from previous discussions, etc. If there is no solution to the current problem, the first thought is let's schedule a meeting and invite as many people as possible and someone will come up with a solution.

2. ???? ???????????? - after some hours spent finding the time slot that fits everyone, the invite for the meetings has been sent. In your calendar, you see the invite without any description, no desired outcome of the meeting, and no details about what is expected from attendees. Hmm, are you sure you want to join this call?

3. ?????? ???????? ???????????? at the meeting - you decided to participate in this meeting and you need to discuss some bug in your software, so in the attendees' list, you find the whole dev team (frontend and backend engineers), QAs, Product Owner, Delivery Lead, but also domain experts just for the case that their opinion is needed as well. Usually, the most senior or extrovert people (PO, Delivery lead..) will spend more than half of the meeting talking about their opinion about the problem while an introverted developer or QA who knows the root cause of it will decide not to interrupt others and to talk about this on the next sync.

4. ?????? ?????????????? ???????? ???? ?????? ?????????????? - how do you feel if people make texts or read something else during the call, interrupt each other, discuss some non-relevant topic, or not participating at all in the meeting?

5. ???? ?????????? ???????????? ???????? after the call - so one hour of the meeting is gone and people are still in the middle of the discussion. You need to jump to another call. The organizer hasn't summarized the conclusions, there are no clear action points, and no notes from the meeting. Your first thought would be - Why I joined this call at all?

?????? ???? ?????? ?? ???????????????????? ???????????????

?? ?????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????? ???????????? of the meeting. Do it ahead of the call, at least one day earlier. Send the invite with a short description of the meeting, what is the goal (is it a status update or decision needed), and the expected outcome. Dedicate some time to the preparation of the meeting.

?? ?????????????????????????? ???????????? ?????????????????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????????????????? ?????????? - be sure that you have enough participants for a productive open discussion with diverse perspectives. A good meeting strikes a balance between minimizing attendees and maximizing the creative potential of a group.

? ?????????????????? ???????????? ?????????? - avoid side discussions, keep people engaged, use visuals on a screen, start and end on time, and no interruptions of others as long as you stick to the agenda. It is your job as meeting leader to intervene in behaviors that derail meetings.

? ???????? ?????? ?????????????? ?????????? ?????? ???? ?????? ?????????? - having a facilitator and a dedicated note-taker is a good place to start. Feel free to stop the discussion if it takes too long. Your meeting is time-boxed.

?? ???????? ???????? ?????????? ?????? ?????? ???????????? ?????????? ???? ???????? ???????? - share your screen and document keynotes during the call. You can get multiple benefits from it: you summarized what had been discussed during the call, you validated your understanding of the topic, and all attendees are aligned with defined action points.

?? ?????????? ???????????????? ???????? ?????????? ???????? ?????????? ?????? ????????????

R?????????? ?????? ?????????? ???????????? ???? ????????????????.

There are several tips for it:

? If you want to do a status update or report, create a proper template and send it via email and be open to the feedback

? Record meetings for optional attendees - once the meeting is over and the recording is available, you can share it with anyone who was unable to attend.

? Artificial intelligence (Conversational AI) can mean fewer meetings for your team. Conversation intelligence is artificial intelligence that analyzes, you guessed it, conversations. There are many tools (e.g. Meeting Insights) that can sum up all the important points, do virtual meeting transcripts for specific topics or organize async follow-ups. Investigate and learn more about AI.