12 Best Ways To Cut Meeting Times In Half

When it comes to business, time is money— that means any way you can increase efficiency and eliminate time-sucks is good for your bottom line. So what’s one of the worst offenders, as far as time is concerned, in many company models? That’s easy: the good, old-fashioned business meeting.

With that in mind, here are 12 of the best ways to cut your meeting times short. When you want to quit wasting time and start freeing up your staff, here’s what you ought to do.

Know your purpose

Why are you meeting? What do you need to communicate? Nail this down before you drag your employees into the conference room, and save yourself the time of figuring this out in the meeting, with everyone waiting on you. Set a clear agenda with goals of what you need to discuss—then stick to it.

Know who should come

Why should the whole company come to the boardroom for a meeting that only requires input from the service personnel? Why does your secretary need to leave the phones when the meeting is about things you could fill her in on later? By only inviting the people who need to be at a meeting to a meeting, you save everybody time.

Share subject ahead of time

People rarely reach decisions in 30-minute board meetings, it takes time to consider the steps and implement them. So to make your meetings more efficient, share the subject matter ahead of time. This gives it a little time to marinate beforehand, which helps you come to faster conclusions.

Start on time

Set the quick pace for your meeting by starting on time.

Be the one to run the meeting

Take initiative to run the meeting rather than sitting back passively. If you wait on someone else to keep things moving, it won’t happen. Instead, take it upon yourself to lead the discussion and help bring it to a close.

Set a deadline

If you only need to discuss a few quick things and can finish the meeting quickly, set a short deadline—15 minutes, say. Then announce this deadline when you call the meeting (“Let’s meet for 15 minutes around noon”) and when you start it (“In the next 15 minutes, I want to go over X and Y”). By setting a deadline and sharing it with your colleagues, you help keep yourself accountable to a specific schedule. This keeps your meeting short.

Hold meetings in the morning

Schedule your meetings early, when people are still fresh and energetic, rather than at the end of the day.

Minimize distractions

Holding a meeting in a crowded lobby or a loud restaurant creates unnecessary distractions. Choose instead to meet in a place with minimal distractions and reduce the ones you can—turn off the TV or radio, hold calls if appropriate, etc.

Try standing

Believe it or not, standing can be an efficiency booster for meetings. When you aren’t sitting comfortably in a chair, you might find it easier to remember to keep things short.

Delegate tasks

As you work through your agenda, check each item off your list by assigning it to a specific person. Ensure that someone is responsible for each task that needs to get done, and then move on.

Close the meeting clearly

One reason meetings run long is they’re hard to end. People keep talking, questions keep coming up, and nobody’s free to leave. So to prepare for this inevitability, take initiative to close the meeting. When your goals have been accomplished and time is up, say something like, “Looks like that’s all we have time for today! Shoot follow-up questions to my email!” Another idea is to give everyone one final chance to speak, but in a limited way: “Give us one sentence with your takeaways here,” or “In one word, what are your final thoughts?” Then, close the meeting and get going.

Leave with purpose

Assign someone to take notes during the meeting so you can easily review what’s been discussed. When you close, summarize the discussion and leave with purpose (a new step to take, a new decision to be made, a deadline imposed on the group).

Your thoughts

Does keeping meetings short seem tricky to you? Do you wish you could make them more efficient but feel unsure of how? If so, follow the steps outlined in the above post and move towards a quicker, better way of getting things done!

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/strategy/12-best-ways-cut-meeting-times-half-0657169?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=12-best-ways-cut-meeting-times-half