Contents
Time is money: Techniques for taking advantage of time in meetings
Time management
A good structure, not taking longer than 40 minutes or avoiding many participants are key to having productive work meetings
Those who are forced to attend many have a common feeling: many times the Work meetings They go on, and on, and give little result. But why this widespread feeling? In addition, now that most of these meetings take place electronically, many times the meetings, due to poor organization, or lack of objectives, end without giving the expected results, neither for the organizers nor for the attendees.
It is essential, then, to learn to take advantage of the time so as not to end within a unproductive meeting loop that have few results and take a lot of time. “Half of people feel that meetings are not productive, and this is mostly because they are not well planned,” says Cecilia Mansilla, an expert in business meeting leadership and a Udemy instructor. He points out that an important factor for the efficiency of the meetings is to facilitate the meeting for all those present, but that, even so, it is not the only thing. “Even so, if we facilitate the meeting well, choose a moderator and organize the conversation, but do not define an objective for the meeting, we will continue wasting time instead of investing it,” he says.
Adapt to the digital environment
One of the most important factors right now is that the vast majority of business meetings take place online. Cecilia Mansilla says that an estimated 15% of virtual meeting time is wasted resolving technical issues. “The more people involved, the greater the time wasted … if we don’t check everything first,” he warns. To avoid this, he has a very simple advice: have everyone connect 10 minutes earlier than expected, and the host greet all participants. “With this greeting, we will make sure that they hear us and see us, and that their microphones and cameras are working properly. By doing this technical review before we start, we will avoid facing challenges during the meeting ”, he recommends.
Two key points to have productive meetings are both the time that is used in it, and the number of participants. Cecilia Mansilla gives as an example the 40 minutes duration closed of Zoom meetings. “This is because it has been proven that this time is sufficient to meet group objectives; the ideal is this duration ”, he points out. As for the number of people who, ideally, should be in a meeting, the professional refers to a “rule” of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon: the rule of two pizzas. “If two (average) pizzas do not arrive to feed all the people in the room, there are too many participants and we must rethink the meeting,” he explains and continues: “Six people is already an interesting number and more than enough to get together.”
Three keys to online meetings
Cecilia Mansilla, an expert in business meeting leadership and a Udemy instructor, leaves three essential tips for virtual meetings:
1. Connect 10 minutes before. As a host or as a participant, connecting 10 minutes before will prevent technical problems during the meeting.
2. Interact, other than a monologue. If you speak by yourself during the meeting, the participants will get bored. Use the tools provided by your platform to interact, at least every 10 minutes.
3. Turn off notifications. In the virtual environment we compete against notifications. While we are in the video call, we will receive emails, WhatsApp notifications and many more apps that will want to draw our attention so that we can address them. Turn them off so they don’t tempt you and you can focus on the meeting.
About what we must keep in mind for our meeting to be a success, says Cecilia Mansilla that there is three key aspects: the objective, the participants and the agenda. In order to set a goal, he comments that it is essential, when coordinating a meeting, to ask the following questions: “What are we meeting for?”, “What is the goal?” and “What is the expected result?” «If we cannot answer these questions, let’s not coordinate the meeting. This is how we are going to define the objective that will guide the meeting and give us a reason to organize our agendas and invest time attending this meeting ”, he explains.
The importance of the agenda
Likewise, the professional says that, if we know what we are looking for, we have the right people, but we do not structure the meeting, it is very likely that we will waste time during the meeting. «On the agenda we will define the topics to be discussed and assign durations to each one. This agenda will serve as a reference for the participants to know exactly what we are going to do; he will be our guide during the meeting ”, he adds.
Finally, the professional gives advice both to the participants of a meeting and to the person who coordinates it: «As coordinators we must always focus on: objective, participants and agenda; as participants, we can take action to make sure we really invest our time in meetings, and not waste it. “Check what is the objective behind the invitation. This way, you will make sure that your participation is really necessary and that you will play an active role during the meeting ”, he recommends to finish.