How to Run More Effective Team Meetings

Anonymous

StandupHow many meetings do you have scheduled next week?

Go ahead, pull up your calendar right now. Three? Five? Ten? 

If your calendar is full of internal staff meetings, it's safe to assume that you're not the only one on your team who is dealing with an overloaded schedule.

While some meetings are critical, there's a good chance that you can optimize your team meetings by following some of the best practices that we've learned over the years.

In this blog post, you will learn:

  • The Impact of Eliminating "The Dreaded Presentation"
  • The Golden Rule: No agenda, no meeting
  • The Benefits of Collaborative Software
  • How to Optimize Status Meetings with Demand Metric

 

The Impact of Eliminating "The Dreaded Presentation"

Stop forcing your team members to "quickly run through" your presentations.

Instead, send materials that you would use during your meeting to participants at least 24 hours in advance so they can familiarize themselves with your deck.

If you need feedback from your team and believe that a meeting is necessary, ask for specific feedback in advance so that you can obtain meaningful input

Asking for feedback in advance will cut down meeting time significantly. Plus, instead of a few people doing all the talking, you can have a more valuable discussion because everyone on your team can prepare. The result? Time savings and increased productivity for all.

 

The Golden Rule: No Agenda, No Meeting 

Are your team members being dragged along for the ride in meetings they shouldn't be in at all? 

When you have an agenda, you can keep participants from wasting time by stating clear objectives for every meeting

Having specific objectives will help determine who's needed in the meeting while ensuring that the conversation remains focused and on track.

 

The Benefits of Collaboration Software

One of the biggest culprits of wasteful meetings is status update meetings.

The use of collaborative software dramatically reduces the need for an hour long (let's face it…sometimes 2 hours long) status updates. Project managers often organize these and involve everyone who needs to report on their progress towards deadlines. Collecting this information is crucial, but does it have to be done in person every week? We don't think so.

Using collaborative software can reduce the need for long-winded status update meetings by enabling all members to communicate online in a shared discussion space – one essential function of a collaborative software platform.

Project leaders can access conversations at any time to gather updates. If they have any questions, they can reach out to individual team members directly, rather than scheduling a meeting for the entire team.

 

How to Optimize Status Meetings with Demand Metric

Demand metric's Marketing Project Management app delivers communication bliss - no misunderstandings, no wasted time. With clear visibility into the status of tasks by each assigned team member, clear targets to meet deadlines, and benchmarks to see how team members are doing, you can eliminate unnecessary meetings day after day. 
 

That said, we realize the right technology is only half the battle. Instead of a weekly hour-long meeting, try having shorter meetings more frequently.

Our team members have regular "Standup" meetings. Our Standups usually last around 10 minutes, and each person answers three crucial questions:

  1. What did you do yesterday?
  2. What will you do today?
  3. Are there any impediments in your way?

 
The goal of each Standup is to help the team understand what everyone's working on, and how they can help to get things done collaboratively.

Most Standup meetings take place with the team standing so that everyone stays engaged and not get too comfortable.

Here's the simple calculation that we used to make the call on Standups vs. weekly team meetings:

 
Team Meeting:
One meeting weekly * 90 minutes = 90 minutes/week of team bandwidth.
 
Daily Standup
Five meetings weekly * 10 minutes = 50 minutes/week of team bandwidth.

 

Voila! We have just found an extra 40 minutes each week AND our team is working more collaboratively than ever before.

Here at Demand Metric, we're advocates of a Kanban or Scrumban approach. To learn a bit more about Agile Marketing, check out this post.

 

Analyst Bottom Line

By taking advantage of a project management tool for team collaboration, you can make better use of the time that you spend together as a team. 

Here are a few resources to help you immediately leverage an organized approach to Agile Marketing with your team:
 
 
If you are looking for a software solution that is Agile-friendly,  sign up for a free 30-day trial with Demand Metric, which allows teams to use a digital Kanban board collaboratively.