Awesome Hacks To Have More Productive Meetings

I find meetings strangely relaxing. The minute you walk into a meeting, you drop into low gear and coast around topics that you really should be attacking. But I believe if you’re going to call people away from their desks, it really should be for a bloody good reason.

Basically, if something warrants calling a bunch of people away from their desks, it warrants the necessary focus to get it done right.

So how do you have a more productive meeting? Here are a few tricks I use to make meetings hyper-productive!

What makes a meeting productive?

Ok, so a meeting is when a bunch (more than 1) people gather to talk about stuff and make a decision. The goal with a productive meeting is to increase the number of decisions per minute. And the easiest ways to do that are to:

1. Reduce the amount of white space between important decisions (by removing unimportant decisions)
2. Decrease total time of the meeting

The goal with a more productive meeting is to increase the number of decisions per minute. And the easiest ways to do that are to reduce the amount of white space between important decisions, and decrease total time of the meeting

With that in mind, these are some of my QUIRKY HACKS for having a more productive meeting:

Make your meeting more productive with a hyper focussed agenda

Setting an agenda isn’t something that should surprise you. But the HYPER FOCUSSED part should. A meeting that bleeds into multiple topics has no focus, and isn’t productive. It also becomes way harder to ensure clear, actionable takeaways when you’re bouncing across topics.

A meeting that bleeds into multiple topics has no focus. It also becomes way harder to ensure clear, actionable takeaways when you’re bouncing across topics.

Now I know your immediate response is “Um, but then I would need more meetings to get to the same point, which is way more inefficient!”. Nope! That is bullshit, and here’s why.

Sub-consciously our approach to most meetings is “I have some face time, I better maximise it”. You do this by cramming it full of sundry topics like:

• personal elements (How’s the family?),
• office gossip (IT still hasn’t fixed my monitor!),
• and any other manner of non-relevant crap.

Realistically though, most meetings exist because there are 1 or 2 SUPER IMPORTANT things that you need to cover. And those are the only things that you should be meeting about. Everything else should be dropped, or handled outside of a meeting (Like in email). Even better, try taking the lead on some of the smaller things and impress people with what an impressive “Self starter” you are!

As for what goes in to the hyper focussed agenda for your productive meeting? Here is a simple framework for making sure your agenda rocks:

1. What is the problem/situation (Present)
2. What gave rise to the problem/situation (Past)
3. What options/steps have you identified to address the problem/situation (Future)

And lastly, before concluding the meeting, make sure that you clearly capture the outcome and what the next steps are.

P.S. A good ‘next step’ states WHO must do WHAT by WHEN.

Remote meetings are productive meetings

I’m completely pro remote working. And the reason is that everything feels like it’s moving 100x faster when you’re separated from the ecosystem and have to “Catch up”. You don’t have time to worry about what Jenny from Accounting is doing.

If you’ve ever had a meeting over video call, you know how awkward they are. It’s strange to gossip, and you’re constantly aware that you’re staring at your own face. So you do everything you can to get through it quickly and make it a productive meeting. And tadaaaaa, there it is! Make more of your meetings over video call (Skype / Google Meet) and you basically psyche yourself into having super productive meetings!

Meetings without distractions are productive meetings

Smart phones and laptops have formed a critical part of our day to day lives. A study by mobileinsurance.com found the average person spends around 90 mins a day on their phone (that amounts to 23 days a year, and 3.9 years of the average person’s life). While digital devices aren’t going anywhere, we need to do more to ensure they’re being used productively!

A simple trick to make your meeting productive is to keep your phone out of sight during meetings. You can do this a number of ways, including leaving your phone at your desk, or slipping it into a box or jar set aside in the meeting room (If the company takes a united stance to remove distractions to make meetings productive). This is a really simple way to make your meeting productive, especially when everyone in the company does their utmost to police it.

Standing meetings are productive meetings

Ok, this one is a little more sneaky. Have productive meetings by avoiding conference rooms, having meetings in corridors or standing in general office areas. I know this sounds properly mental, but hear me out. The goal here is to get to a decision on the important stuff as fast as possible. And nothing makes you get to the point faster than when the other person has places to be, or you’re uncomfortable! Also, by standing, you’ll naturally pace or sway, and this in my experience keeps you sharper during the discussion!

P.S. Bonus points if you block a corridor/door, or catch the other person on their way to the bathroom 🙂

Like this article? Please smash that 👏 button to give it some ❤️ ❤️ ❤️! Also, please leave a response as I would love to know your tricks to having more productive meetings.

Originally published at stephenmaclennan.com on April 15, 2018.

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