It really doesn’t matter what type of business you run or how many employees you have; the better you are at holding meetings, the more motivated your staff will be to stay productive and to outperform.
What people fail to remember here is that ‘more’ and ‘longer’ do not necessarily equal better when it comes to meetings. But if what you’re going for is dread and monotony, then have at it. If you aren’t, though, here’s a little advice to improve the quality of your weekly meetings.
USE TECHNOLOGY
Technology is one of the simplest ways to capture and maintain attention, and this can be used not only for internal meetings but externally as well.
You can do any variety of things like using a touchscreen Mondopad to display ongoing projects or distributing tablets so meeting attendees can take notes or review a weekly agenda.
Think of it this way: The more opportunities you give your staff to engage, the more likely they are to participate. The more they participate, the more likely your team, as a whole, is going to stumble upon something great.
USE AGENDAS
Stay away from ‘meeting’ agendas and, instead, try to create a weekly agenda. An agenda that describes what is to be covered during a meeting is always a bad idea. These may prevent staff members from discussing other important action items not present on the agenda, as well as inhibit the opportunity for open-ended debates and creativity.
A weekly agenda, however, will provide an overarching outlook of what items are hot and what will be coming up, helping to steer meetings in a more beneficial direction.
Going back to the technology piece, upload the agenda to a file-sharing application like Dropbox and allow team members to review the document on a tablet or phone during the meeting.
CHANGE IT UP
You don’t always need to have a Monday morning meeting. It doesn’t always have to be exactly 45 minutes long. And it doesn’t always have to be in the back conference room.
The point is that the more you change things up and the more you keep your staff members on their toes, the more likely you are to avoid that whole “dread and monotony” ordeal.
Meet for an hour at the local coffee shop, bring your mobile devices, and discuss the upcoming week over pastries and lattes. Or, skip the Monday meeting altogether and gather for about 10 minutes on Thursday to chat about new ideas and potential prospects. Then, schedule a follow-up meeting for late Friday afternoon to dig a little deeper into how viable these ideas are and how hot these potential prospects might be.
Do what you can, when you can, with whatever resources you have. Don’t force meetings if they aren’t necessary, and don’t suck up valuable time if it can be spent better elsewhere.
