[Advice] How To Have More Effective Meetings

[ionnaine]

One of the things I have really focused on as an entrepreneur is to optimize my time, When I worked for large companies I always hated long drawn out meetings that didn’t accomplish anything for me. As a result I don’t hold long meetings with my business, I keep them short and to the point, I find everyone gets more out of this and really appreciates the extra time they get back.

These are the 3 tips I use for to keep my meetings short and to the point. I have a video on the same topic here:

But all the same info is below.

1. Keep Them Short
   schedule meetings for as short a period as possible, so often in the corporate world we see people scheduling hour meetings as a minimum, most time that’s far too long and it invites an abundance of time wasting conversation because people feel like they need to fill that time.

I like to schedule meetings for 10 to 15 minutes if it’s with one or two people, if there are more I might go 20-25 but I always try to keep it below 30.

This allows me to set the tone that this time is limited and that we can’t go over, this short timeframe encourages people to be concise and get to the point.

The last thing I want is people thinking meeting is codeword for break time or a non-productive time of the day, if we have to meet to go over goals or go over projects then we to understand that time is valuable and treat it as such.

1. Have a Focused Agenda
   go in with a well defined scope and agenda so that you don’t get off topic and waste that short period of time.

Do this by picking the main topic, defining so that it’s clearly understood and then branch off all of the sub topics that are directly related to why you are having the meetings.

I also break down how much time is allowed for each point that needs to be covered in the meeting, this helps keep things on schedule and the momentum of the meeting moving forward.

If you don’t go in with a clearly defined agenda that is time boxed then it’s very easy for the meeting to run off on a tangent and derail the whole topic. Next thing you know a 15 minute meeting turned into an hour and you’ve got nothing done.

Keep it tight, focused and on track and you will be able to stick to your to timeframe.

1. Only Invite The Key Players
   It’s rare that I will invite every member of my team to a meeting, unless it’s a general meeting to just recap a project or how the company is doing.

I have been to countless meetings where I wondered why I was even there, why did I need to waste so much of my time for thing that don’t involve me, at all. I’ve always hated the idea of inviting people to meetings just to keep them in the loop, this is the information age, there are far better and more efficient ways to go about that.

I Only invite the key players because for whatever project or issue we are meeting about I want to be able to cut right into what we need and stay on track. If you invite people who aren't involved you are just wasting their time and putting the meeting at risk of running over.

It’s probably been over 3 years since I’ve had to have a meeting that went over 30 minutes, Of course I’ve had longer planning sessions or brainstorming sessions, but my average meeting is very short.

I hope this helps you guys.