Are your meetings, decision focused meetings?

Unless you know where to focus, How is insignificant!

A recent study suggested that on an average employees spend 37 percent of their time on meetings – which means out of eight hours three hours a day’s approx.

In corporate offices, sometimes meetings are one of the biggest distractions we might face during the day. They also consume inordinate amount of time and suck the energy out of you, leaving you drained.

There is nothing wrong with such gathering or meetings but pointless meetings are one of largest productivity drains. Here are five perspectives if you want to make most from your meetings.

1. Always attend a meeting with agenda: I always like to understand the purpose or objective of the meetings no matter who has invited me. For example, is it a Sales call or collaboration call or further road-map or even if it’s just a relationship building meeting? And that’s what decides the priority & time of meeting. Also, during the meeting if agenda and purpose is clear there are less chances of getting derailed or wander-off from the objectives and it becomes focused meeting with clear outcomes. Isn’t that productive?
2. Prepare for meetings & be focused during discussion: I always prepare my questions and developments around the topic. I am focused throughout the meetings in a way, I keep my phones on silent, don’t get swayed off the topic and just be an active listener, ask questions, share my inputs time to time, lead the discussion if required.

3. Decision making: I create a climate of trust and openness so that everyone feels free to share their view points and their perspectives. In a way, I always send a mind mapping mail or message to the participants of the meeting so they have some thoughts and ideas drawn well before the meeting. Sometimes, people get distracted or off tracked and in such cases I pull the chord and bring it back to the subject.:) Just like horses are tied blinders during racing to not get distracted by other horses or surroundings.

   I always have conclusions drawn from the meetings towards the end in form of action and follow-up points. Sometimes meetings fizzle out and never reach a decision. Other times, the decision that everybody thought they made never gets implemented. I take commitment from each member for their tasks along with deadline and add that to my reminders.

4. Question every recurring meeting: My team keeps holding meetings back and forth for all matters and from everyone considering it as important. I always sift thru the next weeks meeting in my calendar and only the ones those cant be solved without meeting I consider those. Rest, I accomplish it with couple of email or video message. Even for the client meeting I always consider having a introduction call and briefing about what are they looking for helps me in sorting and prioritizing. Else, I end up losing few productive hours of the day realizing the requirement of clients don’t match.

5. About the attendees: I always challenge the attendees list. I include only the key people required in that particular topic of discussion. Rest are being served the highlights and follow-up actions if any. This saves everybody’s time.