Tag Archives for effective meetings

Meetings can become a waste of time, resources and talent of people, if not planned and executed properly. Effective meetings that actually accomplish their objectives and leave the participants energized and motivated, take sufficient work – or proper planning.  

In this post we will discuss how to conduct a meeting successfully. Also included is a list of visual meeting tools that you can use during meetings to make decisions, solve problems, brainstorm and generate ideas.

Steps for Running Effective Meetings

Before you call for a meeting, you need to make sure that you actually need to have one. If it’s a matter that you should handle personally with an individual, don’t gather the entire team to discuss it.

And if you think you can depend on other methods of communication such as email, newsletter etc., to convey your message, you can avoid wasting the time of your employees with another meeting.

Set Objectives for the Meeting

What is  the purpose of the meeting? Is it to make a special announcement? Decide on something? Solve an issue that is hindering the progress of your project?

Determining the purpose of your meeting and setting an objective to be achieved by the end of it is the first step you need to take when planning for an effective meeting. This objective will help lay the foundation for a well-focused discussion.

List Down Meeting Attendees

Decide who should be attending, taking into consideration their availability and their ability to contribute to the objective of the meeting. This could be key decision makers, experts in the topic, those who are affected by the outcome etc.

If someone cannot make it to the meeting, but their input is still needed, you can make arrangements to connect with them through a conference call or another online collaboration tool.

Also select and assign the different roles needed to run the meeting, including facilitator, timekeeper and recorder etc.

Create the Meeting Agenda

An agenda is something everyone who is attending, should get prior to the meeting. You can send this out along with the meeting invite. This way they can decide whether their attendance is necessary or not.

It should include the meeting items arranged in a logical order, and a realistic time duration set for each item.
Following is a meeting agenda template created with Creately. You can edit it online and customize it to meet your requirements.

Once modified you can share it with the rest of the attendees with a secure diagram share link, or embed it with the Creately Viewer in your intranet or internal websites for everyone to easily access it.

Select a Suitable Place with Facilities

Depending on the tone you want to set for the meeting, select a place (i.e. conference room for a formal setting). Make sure that it is available on the date and during the time you have selected for the meeting.

Don’t forget to check that all the necessary equipment for the meeting is available as well. This might include projectors, screens, and other tools for video calls etc.

Finish with an Action Plan

Create an action plan to make sure that the decisions made during the meeting are carried out afterwards.

While your reporter/ recorder can use an action plan template like the one below, it should include the tasks/ actions, those who are responsible for carrying them out and the follow-up for action items.

Tools for Productive Meetings

Now that we have looked at how to conduct a meeting, here are several visual meeting tools that you can use for different purposes like decision-making, problem-solving and brainstorming.

Mind Maps

Mind maps are a great tool for organizing ideas, planning and taking down notes.

If you are brainstorming solutions to an issue, a mind map can help capture the free flow of thoughts. If you are discussing a subject, you can use it to dig deeper into the topic.

And if you want to present information to your meeting attendees in an easy-to-understand way, a mind map can be a great option.

Here’s how to use mind maps effectively in a meeting.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

This tool is used to assess companies during strategic planning, project planning meetings etc. You can also use it to evaluate the efficiency of your department, product, project team or competitor.

Need to know how to use a SWOT analysis effectively?

Fishbone Diagram / 5 Whys

These are tools used in root cause analysis.

While the fishbone diagram (a.k.a. Cause and effect diagram) helps identify and isolate the root cause of a problem, the 5 whys diagram lets you drill down an issue and analyze its underlying cause and effect relationship.

Check out our ultimate guide to fishbone diagrams to learn how to apply it.

Affinity Diagram

Affinity diagrams help you gather and organize large amounts of data to identify patterns and themes. This would come in handy f you are running a meeting to analyze and make sense of a lot of data gathered from research, brainstorming sessions etc.

Flowchart

Trying to optimize a process? Identify bottlenecks in your process? Or design a new process? Flowcharts can help you with these purposes and many more.

A flowchart is basically a visualization of process steps. It can also help with problem-solving and decision-making.

Here’s our ultimate guide to flowcharts to learn about how to use them.

Six Thinking Hats

This is another tool to ensure that your meetings are highly productive. The six thinking hats is a tool that allows you to explore the different perspectives of the meeting attendees.

Each member is asked to wear the different colored hats (which stand for different perspectives) in turn and express their opinion on the matter. Learn how to use the six thinking hat technique in more detail here.   

Here are a few more visual brainstorming techniques you can use during your meetings and group discussions.

Anymore Tips on How to Conduct a Meeting?

The steps we have listed in this post are easier to follow and guarantee success. Combine them with the tools we have mentioned to ensure maximum productivity during your meetings.

What other tips do you have on how to conduct a meeting? Do share them with us in the comment section below.

Three weeks ago we had the beta release of real-time collaboration in Creately and the feedback was amazing. We are really privileged to have committed users like you who are eager to help out by giving feedback. So after a very tiring few weeks, we are ready to roll it out to everyone by default.

After this release every Creately user will have real-time collaboration enabled for them. So share a diagram with your friends and experience real-time for yourself. With teams in Australia and Sri Lanka we regularly have online meetings and we are already seeing how beneficial real-time is. It’s amazing how easy it is to make decisions or give your opinion when you can visualize what others want in real-time. Give it a try and see for yourself.

Power Up Meetings Using Real-Time Collaboration

When you are trying to get a point across nothing helps like having a diagram to explain what you mean. A picture does speak a thousand words. So try coupling Creately with your online meetings on Skype, Webex or IM. With Creately’s real-time collaboration everyone will be on the same page literally. Having Creately by your side when you are discussing a point over the phone is the next best thing to everyone on the call being in the same room.

Imagine how this transforms the process of trying to agree on a project schedule over a skype call. Having the instantly updatable version of a Gantt Chart on Creately available to all parties, you’d get the point across much faster, and stakeholders can modify these tasks set timelines, add dependencies etc. As everyone sees the changes, the meeting gets closed off faster.

Other obvious use-cases include defining process flows using flowcharts, brainstorming with mind-maps, designing websites using wire-frames. The possibilities are endless.

Taking Diagramming to the Next Level

Our core aim is help users to communicate their ideas visually and enable visual collaboration within teams. Real time collaboration is a core piece of this aim. And so is helping people get started quickly with the Creately diagram community. It provides users with thousands of diagram templates and features like projects as libraries enable easy sharing among users. Now with real-time we made collaboration easy and simple, so you can get things done faster.

How will you use the new Realtime Collaboration features?

Let us know. We love using it side by side with Skype or Webex for brainstorming, meeting notes and to hammer out finer points in a software spec. Let us know at support@creately.com or tweet us at @creately.

Now go and have fun with real-time collaboration!