The Secret to Short and Effective Meetings

The Secret to Short and Effective Meetings

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Meetings: the “M” Word Why do people hate meetings?

They waste time. There is no clear purpose and direction for the meeting.

They are inconclusive. People leave the meeting each with a different idea of what was decided, or no idea what – if anything – was decided.

They don’t accomplish anything. Action is promised but never implemented, and no one is called to account.

In a word, they are ineffective. The time invested is not worth the outcome.

In a survey of Microsoft® employees known as Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge (PPC), the results found that on average people spend 5.5 hours a week in meetings, and 71% feel that meetings are typically unproductive

2. The survey also found that the most common pitfalls are unclear objectives, lack of team

communication followed by unclear priorities3.

If we could make them even as little as 25% more effective, our productivity would improve by more than $1,500 per year per employee.

Live Information Capture The secret to short, effective meetings is to capture the decisions and action items assigned during the meeting in a common document that each person can see as changes are made. You can do this by displaying the meeting document live to the entire group on a projector or via shared desktop using an online meeting platform such as WebEx™ or GoToMeeting™. This is called “live information capture” and literally puts everyone on the same page.

Typically, people attending a meeting take their own private notes. Sometimes, minutes of the meeting are published by one of the note takers but not until later, so any miscommunications or omissions don’t surface until after the meeting is over; perhaps not at all. Ineffective meetings are the result of three problems:

1. decisions are not made, clearly understood and agreed to during the meeting;

2. there is no mechanism for quickly arriving at those decisions; and

3. decisions made are not properly documented for accountability and follow-up after the meeting.

Live information capture solves all three of these problems.


With live information capture, there is one common document that is visible to all of the people in the meeting. This document shows the goals of the meeting and is modified in real time to record the decisions made and action items assigned during the meeting for all to see. Each person leaves the meeting with a copy of the same document as a common set of minutes. The same document is used to follow up on action items at the start of the next meeting, ensuring accountability.

Formats for Live Information Capture One way you could implement live information capture is to make notes using word processor and project them onto conference room screen. However using text-based notes in this way is cumbersome and difficult to follow. This is why you will rarely see this done, even though word processors have been around for more than 20 years. A much more practical way is to use a hub format.

A hub is a visual representation of a text outline, but is much easier to create, read and edit in real time. The hub format is short for “hub and spoke.”

A hub has a central shape that represents a central idea (the subject of the meeting, for example). The shapes attached to the spokes are components of this idea, called topics (the agenda items, for example).

Hub topics can themselves be the center of a set of sub-topic shapes and so on.

Product Launch Meeting

Dates

Final Beta

Review copies

Announcement

Ship

PR Campaign

Press Release

Reviews

Road Show


Conducting a Meeting with Live Information Capture Using live capture with a hub format is only possible if you use a tool like SmartDraw that is designed to make it simple.

Establish a Clear Purpose for the Meeting Begin by creating an agenda for the meeting in the hub format before you hold the meeting. Open a Mind Map template in SmartDraw.

Add topics for each of the major items you need to handle in the meeting. We’ll use a software product launch as an example:


Display and Capture Information during the Meeting During the meeting, use a projector (or a shared desktop) to display the agenda hub to all of the attendees. Use the topics to drive discussion towards more detail, decisions and action items. Capture information as additional topics or sub topics by modifying the hub in real time during the discussion.

In our example, we added more detailed tasks to the topics and a new topic, “training for the sales team.”

Because this information is captured live in front of the group, communication and consensus is clear.

Assign Tasks with Accountability The next step is to assign these tasks to attendees. SmartDraw makes this simple with a special Assignment View. This is a view with the people as the topics and the tasks they are to perform as sub topics. Clicking on the Assignment View tab switches the view.

Initially, all tasks are unassigned.


You can add people or tasks using simple keyboard commands, or by clicking a button.

You move a task by simply dragging it from one person to another.


Use the controls to add attendees and then drag the tasks for which they are responsible to their box.


Doing this live so that everyone in the meeting can see what tasks they are being assigned and see what tasks others are being assigned, results in clear communication and creates accountability. Everyone can see what tasks everyone else has been assigned. Your meeting really does lead to action and results.

After the meeting Give everyone who attends a copy of the hub built during the meeting. This can be done electronically or by printing it. You can email the document directly from SmartDraw. The recipient does not need a copy of SmartDraw to view the emailed copy.

SmartDraw also integrates with SharePoint® and you can manage it as a shared document using SharePoint.

The hub replaces the minutes of the meeting. There is no room for different recollections of what actions were decided, or who is responsible for them, because these are made clear to everyone during the meeting and afterwards.

The final step is to follow up with a second meeting that begins with a review of the meeting hub and the progress that each person has made towards the completion of their tasks. Again, this is done publically in the meeting. This creates real accountability.

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visual meeting with

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Technology

The Secret to Short and Effective Meetings