As working professionals, we all know the struggle of balancing a full schedule with the need to get meaningful work done. Meetings, in particular, can be a significant drain on our time and energy, often taking away from the deep work that we need to focus on to move the needle forward. Whether it’s a conference call, team meeting, or one-on-one with a colleague, meetings can quickly become a source of frustration and burnout.
If you’re tired of feeling like your calendar is controlling your life, you’re not alone. But there is hope.
By adopting an ROI-driven scheduling approach, you can take back control of your time and make every meeting count whether you are working in social media, marketing, finances or operations, this blog will help you.
In this blog, we’ll explore the strategies and tools you need to make sure that every meeting you attend is worth the investment. So let’s dive in and learn how to make the most of our time!
Define meeting objective
Defining the meeting objectives is a crucial step to ensuring that your meetings are productive and valuable. Without clear objectives, meetings can quickly become unfocused and meandering, wasting everyone’s time and leading to frustration and burnout. To avoid this, it’s important to take the time to define what you want to achieve with the meeting before you even send out the invitations.
Here are some tips to help you define your meeting objectives:
- Start with the end in mind: Think about what you want to accomplish with the meeting, and work backward from there. What outcomes do you hope to achieve? What decisions do you need to make? What information do you need to share or receive?
- Be specific: Your objectives should be clear, concise, and specific. Avoid vague or ambiguous language, and use action-oriented language that conveys what you want to accomplish. For example, instead of saying “discuss marketing strategy,” you might say “decide on how to improve landing page ROI for Q2.”
- Prioritize: If you have multiple objectives, prioritize them based on their importance and relevance to the meeting. This will help you stay focused and ensure that you achieve the most important outcomes. This is especially true if you are a startup that wants to maximize ROI and can’t have any inefficiencies.
Here’s an example of how you might define meeting objectives for a marketing team meeting:
Objective 1: Decide on a marketing campaign for Q2
Objective 2: Share results of recent market research study and discuss implications for our strategy
Objective 3: Review progress on current marketing initiatives and identify areas for improvement
By defining your meeting objectives upfront, you can ensure that everyone is aligned and working toward the same goals. This will help you make the most of your time together and ensure that your meetings are productive and valuable.
Choose the right technology
When deciding on the technology to support your meetings, it’s important to consider several factors. First, assess your needs and identify what features and functionalities you require. For example, if you frequently work with remote teams or clients, you might need a video conferencing platform with screen-sharing capabilities. If you frequently collaborate on documents or projects, you might need user-friendly client portal software help you to manage your clients effectively.
Another key consideration is the ease of use. Look for technologies that are intuitive and user-friendly, with clear instructions and support available if needed. The last thing you want is for your team or clients to struggle with the technology, wasting valuable time and causing frustration.
Security is also a crucial factor to consider. Ensure that the technology you choose has appropriate security measures in place to protect your data and confidential information. For example, if you’re sharing sensitive documents, you’ll want to ensure that the platform uses encryption and has robust access controls.
Finally, consider how the technology integrates with your existing tools and systems. If you use tools like Google Calendar or Microsoft Teams, for example, you’ll want to ensure that your meeting technology integrates seamlessly with these tools. This can save time and reduce the need for switching between different platforms.
If you have to execute meetings outside your organization or with people in different time zones, taggg is a great option. Taggg is a group meeting scheduling software that makes it easy to find mutually convenient times for meetings.
With its innovative calendar overlays, Taggg allows you to schedule meetings quickly and easily without the need for voting or polling. Whether you use Google or Microsoft as your calendar, Taggg can integrate with your existing system, making it seamless to use. Another helpful feature of Taggg is its flexible options for your Group Bookable Link, including Shared Availability, Round Robin, or booking with the First Available person. This allows you to customize the scheduling process to fit your needs and preferences.
By considering these factors when choosing meeting technology, you can ensure that you select the best option for your needs and make every meeting count.
Choose the right and only must-required Attendees
Choosing the right attendees for your meeting is another key factor in making every meeting count. Too often, meetings become bloated with unnecessary attendees who don’t need to be there, leading to unproductive discussions and wasted time. To ensure that your meetings are focused and productive, it’s important to choose the right attendees.
Here are some tips to help you choose the right attendees for your meeting:
- Identify the purpose of the meeting: Before you invite anyone to the meeting, identify the purpose of the meeting and what you hope to achieve. Who are the key stakeholders or decision-makers who need to be involved? Who has the information or expertise necessary to move the discussion forward?
- Keep the invite list small: The more people you invite to the meeting, the more likely it is to become unwieldy and unproductive. Keep the invite list small and focused, inviting only those who are essential to the discussion.
- Be respectful of people’s time: When inviting people to a meeting, be respectful of their time and consider whether their presence is truly necessary. If someone’s involvement is only tangential or they won’t have anything to contribute, consider whether it’s necessary to invite them.
- Be transparent: When you do invite people to the meeting, be transparent about why you’re inviting them and what you hope to achieve. This can help people understand the purpose of the meeting and what their role will be.
For example, if you’re scheduling a meeting to discuss a new marketing campaign, you might invite the marketing team members, key stakeholders, and any decision-makers who need to sign off on the campaign. You might not need to invite people from other departments or teams who won’t be directly involved in the campaign’s execution.
By choosing the right attendees for your meeting, you can ensure that the discussion is focused, and productive, and moves the needle forward. This can help you make the most of your time and ensure that your meetings are valuable and worthwhile.
Stay on track and respect everyone’s time
To make every meeting count, it’s important to stay on track and respect everyone’s time. One of the best ways to do this is to create an agenda for the meeting and stick to it. The agenda should clearly outline the purpose of the meeting, the topics to be discussed, and the time allotted for each topic.
During the meeting, it’s important to set time limits for each agenda item and use meeting tools like timers or countdown clocks to keep the discussion moving forward. Encourage everyone to participate in the discussion but also ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak. This helps to avoid any one person dominating the conversation and wasting everyone else’s time.
It’s also important to be respectful of everyone’s time and avoid discussing topics that are not related to the agenda. If there’s a topic that requires more time or discussion, schedule a separate meeting to address it.
For example, if you’re scheduling a team meeting to discuss a new project, your agenda might include a review of the project goals, a discussion of the project timeline, and a review of the project budget. You might set a time limit of 15 minutes for each topic and use a countdown clock to keep the discussion moving forward.
By staying on track and respecting everyone’s time, you can ensure that your meetings are productive, efficient, and valuable. This will help you make the most of your time and achieve your goals more effectively.
Final thoughts
Meetings can be a valuable tool for collaboration, decision-making, and progress. However, all too often, meetings become a source of frustration and wasted time. To make every meeting count, it’s important to take a strategic approach and focus on what really matters.
By defining meeting objectives, choosing the right attendees, leveraging technology, and staying on track, you can make your meetings more productive, efficient, and valuable. These tips can help you achieve your goals more effectively and save time for the deep work that really moves the needle forward.
As you move forward, remember that making every meeting count is an ongoing process. It requires attention, planning, and a willingness to adapt as needed. To take your meetings to the next level, consider investing in additional training or resources that can help you and your team improve your meeting skills. For example, you might consider attending a workshop on effective meeting facilitation or investing in a book on the topic.
Ultimately, the key to making every meeting count is to stay focused, intentional, and collaborative. By doing so, you can ensure that your meetings are productive and valuable and that you’re making the most of your time and resources. So why not start today? Implement some of these tips and see how much more you can achieve in your next meeting.
