We are fortunate at Anywise to be known for creating safe and trusted working environments for our entire team. Key to this is the discipline we encourage for all of our meetings. During the lockdown, much of the formality of meetings was relaxed for those more social gatherings. Now as we come out of the lockdown and turn our focus on greater efficiency and productivity, we thought we would share some of the tips we use to hold less meetings, keep them short and more effective. To make them POPP (Purpose, Outcome, Preparation, Process).
1. Consider the need to actually have a meeting. Most meetings could probably be turned into some pre-reading and a google form to record votes, comments or decisions. Of course, this is not always the case, especially when workshopping ideas, exploring issues or brain-writing. Consider it for decisions, briefings etc.
2. Attendees. If someone is invited to the meeting, they have an important role to play, make sure they have the opportunity to participate fully.
3. Agendas make the world better and meetings "POPP". None of us like going into a meeting without any insight as to the purpose of the meeting, the outcome expected and if a complex meeting or working session, the preparation required and process to be taken. The first one should be standard for all meetings, then the others added as appropriate.
4. Use less time. Google calendar tool has a neat setting called "Speedy meetings". Found in settings in the calendar view, when checked it schedules meetings a little shorter than normal, to provide a planned gap between the meeting and the next. Of course, this only works if meeting hosts stick to the start and end times.
Some discipline around the basics make us all more efficient and open up our working days for more headspace between meetings.
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