5 Surefire Ways to Run a Productive and Effective Business Meeting

2016-05-05 09:00:00 | Jessica Van Liew | Business,business tips

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” – Theophrastus

Studies show that you’re going to waste over 30 hours in meetings this month. According to Atlassian, we spend a lot of time in meetings, and most of them will be insanely unproductive. A business meeting can be a major waste of time in the world of work and it’s no secret that a lot of us hate them. In fact, meetings are a bigger time snatcher than even social media or email!

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Fortunately, some innovative leaders have discovered a few surefire ways to make the business meeting both bearable and productive.

Make your next business meeting less painful with these 5 tips.

Decide if the business meeting is necessary.

Meetings often become a habit in the workplace. The weekly project check-in, the monthly mandated meeting. Many of these productivity crusher meetings could be shortened substantially or even cancelled altogether by identifying the problem the meeting is intended to solve. There may be other ways to achieve the same goal—you can send an email, have a conference call or speak to people individually. To meet or not to meet? That is the question. Sometimes it’s just that simple.

Set an agenda in advance.

Write up an agenda and establish a crystal clear purpose. Before the meeting, give those attending a heads up of what will be covered at least 24 hours in advance. When people have a sense of what they will be discussing, there will be a great benefit for all involved. Let everyone know what the objective of the meeting is and what will be discussed. List out all items that need to be covered and put the name of the person expected to address each issue

Start on time!

Surely this is a big pet peeve for most people. If your business meeting doesn’t start on time, most likely it won’t end on time. Establish a set time for the start time and end time. Staying on time not only helps with productivity but shows that you value other people’s time—including your own. Have someone assigned to keeping track of time and keep you moving through the agenda items on schedule.

Make it the right length.

An effective business meeting should be as long or as short as it needs to be. If your agenda has clear outcomes, goals and time assigned to each item, it will help everyone to stay on task on not have a meeting that could drag on for hours.

End each business meeting with a recap.

Before the meeting is wrapped up, be sure to recap any actions discussed and assign them to the appropriate owners. The absolute WORST thing that could happen without a solid recap and plan of attack is that nobody is clear on what to follow up on and then you have to have another meeting to rehash what was already discussed.

No more feelings of dread. Boost the effectiveness and productivity of your next business meeting by using these helpful tips.