In today's corporate world, modern companies often suffer from a meeting frenzy - in other words, the disease of having too many unproductive meetings. To fight this disease and improve the quality of meetings, experts have invented some technological tools. However, it would be a big mistake to forget the human factor here! As Success Programme, we use these technologies and integrate them into our clients' digital transformation projects.
In short, by putting an end to unproductive meetings, focusing instead on collective intelligence, leaning on your colleagues, and using digital meeting tools, you can start having constructive, participatory and collaborative meetings.1. Remember the most important rule: Meeting = Moving forward on a project
Who wants to find themselves at 9 am surrounded by colleagues who stare at them blankly? Set the agenda in advanceby making a list of important and urgent issues that need to be discussed during the meeting . Involving your team in the preparation process will increase their engagement in the meeting and make it easier for you to find answers that will keep each of them moving forward with their projects.
2. Allow your colleagues to express themselves
You don't need to ask everyone in the room to stand up and speak: Some colleagues may say yes or no without comment, while others may get the impression that their opinions don't matter. As a remedy, you can use technology to increase the effectiveness of your meetings and save time by using live voting or word cloud applications to give employees the opportunity to express themselves in meetings.
3. Leave time to present new projects
People often come out of meetings with a feeling of "same old, same old". You may have found some solutions to some current projects, but the impression remains that you have barely moved on since last week's meeting. If not enough new areas of work have been identified in the allotted meeting time, your meeting is unproductive. So what are you going to do? At the end of the meeting, leave 15 minutes for your colleagues to talk about new projects.
4. Turn your meeting reports into questionnaires
Instead of sending that report again and again that no one reads, use an innovative digital survey. Here are some sample survey questions:
This digital feedback gives you figures, statistics and ideas that you can use to improve the next meeting.
5. Introduce your colleagues to new technological tools
And let technology help you! Managing meetings is one of the challenges managers face on a regular basis. Success Program offers an effective solution to engage your team and make them the driving force of your meetings.
Using fun interactive meeting tools makes your colleagues more engaged. For example, live polling (live voting) helps overcome organizational barriers and feelings of unease and discomfort: Everyone can express their opinion without worrying about being reprimanded by the manager. And at the end of the meeting, instead of long reports lacking clear decisions and solutions, you get automatically generated statistics and much more precise and understandable data.
When you give your colleagues the opportunity to express themselves through digital meeting tools, they become active participants who make the meeting more productive. You may be the captain of this ship, but you won't get very far without your crew. Encourage teamwork and #magicatwork will follow!