The Starr Conspiracy is a full-service marketing agency. Meetings in professional services firms — and especially those in agencies — tend to make the wheels run. Collaboration and brainstorming are activities best done in groups. And yet, efficiency and productivity are essential to getting great work done for our clients on time and on budget.
If you need meetings to keep your world going round as well, but want some tips on how you can have more productive meetings in 2014 (and beyond), take a look at these six tips from within our walls:
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Keep your agenda focused. Just like people can’t be all things to all people — meetings can’t solve try to solve all problems for all attendees. Stay focused on one theme and leave other topics — especially topics involving the past or future — for another time.
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Focus on action items. Ask yourselves, “What are we going to accomplish with this meeting?” and don’t break from the agenda until you have met the meeting’s objectives.
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Reconsider meetings that have earned a regular spot on the calendar. Do you need to meet every week — or could you push that weekly meeting to a monthly meeting? Do you have enough issues to cover every week or do attendees of your regularly scheduled meetings often wonder what the value of your weekly time slot is?
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Keep the attendee list to a minimum. Ask yourself who really needs to be at a meeting and let everyone else use self-exclusion and a post-meeting wrap-up to get some time back on their calendars.
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No surprise invitations. Be sure to interrupt your attendees’ days as little as possible by ensuring they know when meeting invitations are coming and what they pertain to. Sending a surprise meeting invitation can be a huge interruption to someone’s day.
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Shorten the timeframe. Aim for 30 minutes instead of 1 hour and try to give your attendees some time back in their busy schedules. They’ll appreciate the efficiency and a meeting that has defined objectives within a defined timeline can leave participants feeling energized.
Do you have any meeting productivity tips you want to share? Send us a tweet at @StarrConspiracy with your best tip.