Make your meetings more results oriented and feel happier after each workday.
I love it when people in our strategic design company EN GARDE share their talents to the whole team. — Especially on Mondays. Thx Annalena and Gerhild.
The working week contains 5 working days, with about 8 to 10 hours of work per day, normally. But sometimes it feels like that is not enough, that there is never enough time to get all your tasks and meetings done.
And here we are. — Meetings.
Some people like them, because they feel productive while sitting around a table, sending or receiving information from others. Others are bored by them.
I am bored by meetings with zero output. By “output” I mean things like decisions being made, building a paper prototype or a funny and productive co-creation session.
Your and others’ time is something we should treat with respect, because time is a limited commodity for everyone.
Spending productive time with your colleagues just feels better than just talking at a meeting, and working together to produce real output makes a team stronger.
While looking at my calendar and reflecting on this topic, I was surprised by the time I was spending in marathon meetings each week. It made me feel unhappy, because in most of the meetings nothing really happened, nothing was produced.
When leaving the office in the evening, I was frustrated because I felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything.
I started to ask myself, how much time do I want to sit, listen and talk in informative meetings and how much time do I want to be productive for our clients with my team?
For me the ideal split is 75% productive time and 25% informational time.
Looks much better to focus on productivity and results, than just handling information. — Indeed this is just a visualization. ;-)
To make this happen, it is necessary to implement it within the whole team or company and make some rules that are easy to follow and sound like much more fun for everyone.
Here is an easy guideline to implementing the 75/25 rule within your team.
You need to tell your companions. Without letting them know what you are planning, this will not work out. — Remember, it takes two to set a meeting. ;-)
From day X (perhaps, tomorrow!) we will have to differentiate between two kinds of meetings. One is called the informative meeting and the other one the productive meeting. The maximum number of informative meetings should make up 25% of your meetings, the other 75% should be productive working meetings.
The rule is easy:
- 75% for productive meetings
- 25% for informative meetings
In your shared calendar, meetings should be marked informational or productive, such as “#INF Sales forecast for April 2016” or “#PRO Co-creation for great new insurance products”.
Productive meeting session with my EN GARDE colleagues Christina and Emanuel. — Yes it’s a costumer journey.
When you invite colleagues to a meeting, that means that you are using their time.
So you are the leader of the meeting and you set the goal or expected delivery for it — that way, people can be prepared for it.
Ask yourself
- What is my goal for this meeting?
- What is my expectation on the delivery for this meeting?
Mostly you will use the goal for informative meetings and the delivery for productive meetings.
What should you take care of?
Productive Meetings
- Tell the participants the expected delivery and time you would like to invest. This needs also be part of the #PRO invitation.
- You need to be prepared (agenda, paper, pens, printouts, a white board with ideas sketched already, etc.)
- The expected delivery must be clear to everyone (this might, of course, change when the meeting members agree on a change of delivery.)
- Do not keep quiet or be inactive. (If you are not an active part of the meeting, you should leave it immediately.)
- If needed, decide to do a follow-up meeting.
- Stay on time.
You are stealing other people’s time and stressing them out if you start or run late.
Informative Meetings
- Tell the participants the expected goal and the time you want to spend on it.
- Have an agenda prepared.
- Reformulate and write down the expected goal for the meeting and ask at the end if people think that the meeting reached its goal.
- Listen and ask relevant questions.
- Ask people to reformulate what you have said.
- Reformulate to help meeting members to understand.
- Prepare documentation or delegate someone to write up a document with the decisions or relevant points of the meeting.
- Stay on time. (I’m serious!)
Have fun with more output across the whole team for the products and clients you are working for.
Transform from an informative work environment to a results-orientated work environment.
I am looking forward to your questions, additions and feedback. Thanks for spending your valuable time reading this. :-)
Kindly, Philipp
PS: Please share this with your team — they will appreciate the increased productivity at your upcoming meetings.PPS: You can follow me on twitter here, but you definitely should follow EN GARDE on Facebook.