Hacks for Well Organized Business Meeting

[This article was written by Smith Willas.]

Meetings play a very important role in every business. It is the only way to present yourself with your work, the best way to communicate and to put up your points. Meetings usually cover a lot of time at work, every week. So, you should make your meetings beneficial otherwise consuming time will not be profitable for you. Now a-days employees consider meetings to be unproductive. As, meetings are completely unorganized with no proper agenda and time-limit. Exceeding time in a meeting shows a negative impact on the company.

Follow the simple steps to plan an organized meeting in your company-

PURPOSE OF ORGANIZING A MEETING.

Before giving a notice for the meeting, puzzle out the major reasons behind it. Whatever be the reason, remember that it should be effective and essential according to current scenario of the company. As, irrelevant points will give a bad effect to the meeting. Identify and communicate the specific goal and expected outcome of the meeting. Organize your meeting in such a way that each and every employee of your company is interested in working on your agenda.

PREPARE A PROPER AGENDA.

A proper agenda indicates a perfect management of time. Agenda plays a very important role in a meeting. As, the team members will keep a check on the list, and back to back discussion will continue without wastage of time. Planning an agenda will keep the flow on with more productive points. Ensure the discussion and all comments are on relevant topics and before starting the meeting send the agenda to the participants in advance. So, they will come prepared with their up-coming points. This is the key to have potent meeting with your employees.

STICK TO THE TIME-LIMIT

Time is very precious and valuable for everyone. Schedule your meetings in advance and think critically about the amount of time required.  It is not necessary to organize a meeting of an hour. For a good time-management, stick to the needs and try to summarise the minor topics. As, the time consuming meetings are considered to be boring by the employees and most of them are not interested in discussion.

TIDY ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE MEETING

Make sure you organize meeting in a comfort zoon, where the employees are comfortable to sit, talk and represent their presentation in very good manner. Ask participants to put away their phones and laptops for the duration of the meeting and catch up through the meeting notes.

Make a list of all the basics requirements for the meeting, like water bottle, notepad, pen and with some snacks if the meeting is at lunch or dinner time and even when the time-limit is crossed. Decorate your meeting area and wraparound labels that can be customized with your company’s name.

TAKE A GOOD USE OF TECHNOLOGY

Make your meeting cost-effective and efficient by the use of advanced technology in this modern world. It will help to manage a perfectly sound meeting. There are a number of apps which help you in setting up the meeting, providing proper instructions, keeping a track on the discussion and updating the record file as well. In essence, move forward with a pretty specific points or arguments in mind. And remember, that you don’t have to take out the final product. Use the meeting to take your idea share it and improve upon it.

Apart from the above mentioned points, here are some simple tweaks that can make your meetings quite efficient and effective and actually quite satisfying.

• Try to schedule a meeting in advance with the amount of time that’s needed and try to cover the meeting in 15-30 minutes. If the discussion is not coming to an end, then schedule a next meeting after few hours or the next day.
• Remember you only need to invite one person to represent each department or group and try hard to limit the number of attendees.
• If you’re expecting an amazing outcome of the meeting, then you must identify and communicate the specific goal.
• Be concerned about your employees and try to end the meeting 5-10 minutes early. So that people can end the discussion personally and get some time for their next meeting.
• Specific people should be assigned with a deadline to take notes from the record keeper, document decisions and record action items.
• Apart from relevant topics, If, some other topics arise, suggest scheduling a separate time to discuss them and encourage everyone to get back to the topic by reminding them of the objective.

Author Bio:

Smith Willas is a freelance writer, blogger, and digital media journalist. He is also a contributor on esprittoday. He has a management degree in Supply Chain & Operations Management and Marketing and boasts a wide-ranging background in digital media.