10 Strategies to Improve Meetings

Meetings don’t have to suck. How do we ensure that our meetings are effective and inclusive? At One Medical, we’ve found that a diversity of thoughts and safe spaces for honest conversations help us be more productive and have more fun while we’re at it.

1. Change the Setting

There’s nothing that says “serious meeting” like people sitting around a conference table. A different physical environment sets different expectations for how people should interact.

• Sit in a close circle so everyone can see and hear each other.
• Book an alternate space via services like Breather.
• Work outside at a public park, coffee shop, or library.

Can’t escape your conference room? You can still do things like play music (try ChilledCow), change up the lighting, and rearrange the furniture. What’s important is to craft an atmosphere of comfort and closeness.

The One Medical team working from one of our clinics. We got a comfy rug and took our shoes off.

2. Break the Ice

Sometimes we work with strangers or people whose names we barely know, which can make it uncomfortable to share honest thoughts. Make sure everyone in the meeting is familiar with each other.

• Introduce new folks at the very beginning.
• Ask for people to share their names, roles, and something interesting. (For example: What’s something new you’ve learned this past year?)
• During the time when tech is being set up or people are still assembling, ask an ice breaker question.
• Pair people up with their neighbors to talk briefly about themselves.

If there are too many people to break the ice individually, consider something more scalable like a welcome email, happy hour outside of the meeting, etc.

Dogs are my favorite “ice breakers”. This is Teddy here providing immense comfort during an offsite. Just be aware that some people are allergic and scared of dogs.

3. Start with Laughter

Seriousness can cause people to be scared to share for fear of sounding stupid or getting rejected. Laughter can quickly build up a safe space and gives people permission to say what they really feel.

• Ask for the worst idea, or what we shouldn’t do. For example: what’s the worst way to launch a product.
• Talk about times things have failed.
• Do a timed exercise of something difficult, like drawing a portrait.
• Make a skit of the problem or challenge.

Seriousness is not correlated with success. When people are laughing and working together, it’s a sign the team is doing well.

A team exercise around rapidly prototyping services

4. Optimize for Action, Not Words

Ever sat in a meeting where people just talked and forgot everything afterwards? Speech is hard to remember and it’s more effective to make your meeting tangible along the way.

• Brainstorm ideas and then vote on them.
• Pause before everyone leaves to set action items.
• Work together to prototype an experience and then record it.
• Update a shared list of goals and priorities together.

If you find that there are no actions involved or people aren’t ready to share, consider canceling or rescheduling the meeting. If your meeting is about sharing status updates, you might handle it through a virtual, asynchronous standup or an application like Asana or Range.

Here’s the team defining our culture during an offsite. The deliverable for every team was five post-its that described our culture.

5. Provide Heads-Down Time

Not everyone is good at speaking off the cuff and some people need more time to reflect, perhaps by writing or drawing something on paper first.

• Ask a question and set a few minutes of silence for people to write down a few ideas.
• Assign a task with a 10-minute break so participants can take a mental breather and come back with clearer heads.
• Collect drawings and sketches from your visual thinkers.
• Pair people up, tell them to take a walk and come back with ideas.

No time for heads-down time? Tap people before the meeting starts so they can gather their thoughts without the stress of being put on the spot.

Our team visiting the office in Chicago. Sometimes casual work time is way more valuable than formal meetings. We call this “EatWorkChill”.

6. Go Around the Room

Meetings can go stale if only one or a few people contribute. Going around the room gets everyone involved, and people don’t feel like they are singled out.

• Kick off the meeting with a quick hopes and fears exercise.
• Invite people to talk. (For example: “How about folks who haven’t spoken? Do you have anything to add?”)
• Close out with one reflection from each person at the end.
• When the meeting ends, privately ask someone who didn’t speak how the meeting could have gone better.
• Take turns on the different roles required like facilitator, note taker, and time cop.

Not enough time for everyone to speak? Set up a live poll using software like Poll Everywhere or Direct Poll, or ask easily answered questions (“Raise your hand if…”). If you don’t need people to participate, consider video conferencing or sending people optional invites or meeting notes so they feel included but not obligated to join.

Every One Medical clinic holds a daily huddle, during which one of the questions asked around the room is “How are you feeling on a scale from 1–10?”

7. Split into Groups

The larger the meeting is, the harder it is to be intimate. Consider breaking up participants into smaller groups so they can exchange thoughts more easily. You can always ask for each group to share their learnings back to the larger group later.

• Consider grouping people who don’t usually work together.
• Assign a facilitator to each group and provide them with instructions if the task is particularly complicated.
• Allow teams to pick different focus areas to work on. This allows a lot more areas to be discussed and worked on.

For a medical billing workshop, we split into teams to focus on different work streams. This team included a product manager, doctor, senior ops manager, and billing manager.

8. Give Everyone a Vote

One loud voice can make it feel like the whole group agrees, even when that’s not the case. Make it fair by giving everyone a vote.

• Use polling systems like Funretro, Poll Everywhere, or even voting stickers.
• Have the team vote with their feet. For example, go on left side of the room if you want to launch tomorrow, right side if you want another iteration.
• Allow everyone to be able to access the materials being discussed. For example, send out the document being discussed so people can write their own content or comments.

A quick brainstorm on how we can share our product research better. We all voted afterwards with little stickers.

9. Extra Love for Remote Teammates

It’s easy to leave remote teammates out since they are not physically present in the room. Help them be full members of the team by giving them opportunities to contribute and share their thoughts.

• Ask for thoughts from the remote participants.
• Use software like Figma, RealtimeBoard, Google Docs, etc. so remote people can actively participate.
• Have everyone join the virtual meeting room so people’s faces can be seen.
• Make sure your tech works, and purchase high-quality audio and video equipment

For our design team retro, I was able to facilitate the meeting from Barcelona using tools like Zoom and Figma (nonalcoholic drinks, for the record)

10. Facilitate good interactions

Every meeting should have a facilitator or owner who is responsible for the outcome and facilitation of the meeting.

• Set rules and expectations for collaboration at the beginning like equal talking time, being respectful, staying focused, and avoiding screens.
• Politely cut off loud people. For example: “Thank you, _____. What do other folks have to say?”
• To limit disruption, tell people when are good moments to give feedback or ask clarifying questions

During our all-hands meeting, our facilitators keep people on schedule and make sure the meeting goes smoothly.

One Killer Move

If you’re still struggling to bring your team together, one killer move is to think of something the whole team can do together. My go-to is food and snacks. Everybody has to eat and, for thousands of years, humans have been connecting with each other by breaking bread at the same table.

We hosted an event with dipping dots called Future Friday when anyone in the company could come and brainstorm product concepts for the future.

That’s all! I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions on how to improve meetings in the comments below.

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Psst! One Medical is hiring amazing people like you: https://www.onemedical.com/jobs. Thanks to Kimber Lockhart, May Zhang, David Hoang, and Wes Donohoe for help writing this article! I love you guys.