How to Make Your Meetings Productive and Successful?

Everyone wishes for success for any meeting whether it’s a business or personal.   

Generally, these meetings end with no result due to various reasons and end up with mud throwing exercise.   

You must be finding for the tips that make your meetings productive and useful to achieve your targets or goals.  

Image source: The Balance     According to CNBC report, Americans attend around 11 million meetings daily and waste $37 billion a year doing so…!  

What is your #1 tip for a productive meeting?

  Most meetings can be much more productive.   

Once you have developed your meeting plan, ensure that a meeting is an appropriate vehicle for accomplishing the set goals.  

You hear the following tips often enough; – start and end on time, distribute reading materials in advance, be present 100%, no phones or emails.   

Check with the participants who must attend the meeting to succeed. The needed attendees must be available to attend the meeting.  

Summarize any meeting with action planning, that could contain – the specific action item, the name of the person who committed to “owning” the accomplishment of the action item, the due date of the action item, and an agreement about what constitutes the completion of the action item.

Here, some additional tips that could be helpful for achieving your goals; 

  – Keep meeting duration at 30, 60, or 90min.   

– If the meeting topic requires a longer duration, break it down to fit 30, 60, or 90.   

– Utilize the first half of each duration for discussing the problem.   

– HARD STOP at halftime.   

– Spend the remainder on finding the solution.   

– 100% consensus is not necessary.   

– 100% commitment is!   

There could be strong chances that your meetings could become time-consuming exercise which is clearly depicted in the following flowchart,  

99 Percent Of Work Meetings Are Garbage..says this flowchart (Source: Huffington Post)  

Productive management meetings save time, solve problems, improve communication, and reduce costs.   

If you want productive meetings, you have to plan and act on it rigorously. Establish your ground rules from the beginning to avoid any confusion in future.