4 ms·

One problem with group meeting is going on tangent. There should be a clear agenda established prior to the meeting. Having so much frustration with unproducti

One problem with group meeting is going on tangent. There should be a clear agenda established prior to the meeting. Having so much frustration with unproductive meetings, I have been thinking about these, and they work in my case. 1. Attach agenda prior to meetig, along with a link to a Google Doc (or whatever live tool you use) 2. Reiterate agenda at the beginning of the meeting, and if this was a continuation of the previous meeting, go over the outcome of the last meeting. They should be reflect in your agenda. 3. Invite someone to be a moderator. Creator/caller of the meeting may be the moderator — only if the moderator thinks he/she is capable of keeping the meeting on track. 4. Ask attendees to use the doc to add questions/summary/views/new items. 5. Summarize before going to the next part of the agenda and at the end of the meeting. “To do, to be discussed” should be announced. Don’t end meeting by just saying “okay thanks for coming, let’s get to work.” Make sure people know what the outcomes are. I learned #4 when I interned at Mozilla a long time ago. Not sure if everyone team does, but etherpad was very widely used afair. It was helpful for everyone in the team running the meeting in real time and after the meeting, especially because every user gets a different color assigned when the user enters the pad, so we could trace who wrote/made the changd.

tybit 9y ago
Yeah, even simple meeting guidelines/policies help make them a lot more productive in my limited experience. Having meetings have explicit action points agreed on at the end (and who's responsible for them) and written down helped us immensely. We were able to almost completely avoid the constant 'have a meeting, agree on x, fast forward 2 weeks and no one can agree if we agreed on x nor why we did' that I've experienced at every other job.
walshemj 9y ago
2 you should go through the actions from pervious meeting 5 whoever is taking the minutes should summarise every agreed action at the end of the meeting.
valuearb 9y ago
One benefit of this approach is it requires the organizer do work to justify the cost of the meeting. Also to embellish your last point, every meeting ends with distribution of a list of decisions made and responsible parties for implementing them. That ensures every meeting generates tangible benefits, and you don’t have the same meeting over and over again.

tybit 9y ago

Yeah, even simple meeting guidelines/policies help make them a lot more productive in my limited experience. Having meetings have explicit action points agreed on at the end (and who's responsible for them) and written down helped us immensely. We were able to almost completely avoid the constant 'have a meeting, agree on x, fast forward 2 weeks and no one can agree if we agreed on x nor why we did' that I've experienced at every other job.

walshemj 9y ago

2 you should go through the actions from pervious meeting 5 whoever is taking the minutes should summarise every agreed action at the end of the meeting.

valuearb 9y ago

One benefit of this approach is it requires the organizer do work to justify the cost of the meeting. Also to embellish your last point, every meeting ends with distribution of a list of decisions made and responsible parties for implementing them. That ensures every meeting generates tangible benefits, and you don’t have the same meeting over and over again.