Many records will surely be broken during the Olympic games in Rio this summer. Everything revolves around speed and muscle power. Many organizations can learn from that. Take, for instance, the tempo of meetings. Surely there is room for improvement, right? Particularly if you note that the average employee sits an astonishing 6.5 hours a week at the conference table!! If you can boost the efficiency of meetings. Result: enormous time-savings. With the following tips your meetings will run in record time!
How to limit your meeting time
Tip 1: Active meeting team
No Olympic performance is purely individual: it is a collaboration of athlete, trainer, physiotherapist and mental coach. Meetings are also group performances. If there are too many “dead wood” participants, it has a negative effect on the meeting result. Therefore, only include participants who provide added value to the meeting. Those you only need to keep informed, can use the minutes.
Tip 2: Clear structure
Athletes perform optimally when they have clear structure in their training and daily schedules. Use this knowledge when you meet. The structure of your meetings? The agenda. Set a maximum discussion time for each item and a clear goal, whether it be for dispersing information, brainstorming or making decisions. If everyone knows the objective in advance, they prepare much more effectively. And that accelerates your meetings!
Tip 3: Clear regulations
Regulations are essential for athletic competitions. Clear guidelines are also essential for meetings. If your colleagues don’t follow these golden rules, then the meeting chair can address them about it later.
Golden rule 1: the meeting begins and ends on time. If someone is tardy, don’t discuss it during the meeting: that way you avoid running late. In addition, it is extremely annoying for those who did come on time. Determine also a maximum discussion time for each agenda point. That way, every speaker has the same chance and the meeting runs on time.
Golden rule 2: limit background noise in the meeting. Just as in sports, focus is extremely important during meetings. Thus, keep disturbances to a minimum: cell phones should be kept off whenever possible and chatting in the background is prohibited. Once decisions are made during the meeting, don’t discuss them again.
Golden rule 3: short round of questions. The questions at the end of the meeting should be limited to short queries. If one of your colleagues asks something that is a new agenda point in disguise, then schedule it for the following meeting.
Tip 4: The newest techniques
Athletes who want to win an Olympic medal need to continually innovate and experiment with the newest techniques. That maximizes their chance of gold. If you aim to attain peak performance with meetings, then use a modern, digital meeting tool. With this colleagues can post and view their meeting materials online. Saving you a great deal of time before, during and after the meetings!!
iBabs is a leader in paperless meetings and enables you to reduce these piles of documents to the thickness of your tablet. Thousands of organizations have been using this system for more than 15 years.
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