Six rules for productive meetings

I recently gave a talk on meeting productivity for remote teams. People spend many hours each week in meetings (HBR cites execs spend 23 hours a week) yet much of that time feels inefficient or unproductive.

In the presentation I shared six rules for better meeting productivity:

1. Do you really need a meeting?

First rule is to avoid meetings unless you really need them. They are often not the best way to achieve a goal.

2. Less time, fewer people and lower frequency

Second, if a meeting is needed, stop defaulting to weekly meetings with everyone.

3. Set clear goals & agenda

Set goals and agenda and share in advance. This way people can come with ideas to help you solve your problem.

4. Come with an answer

If your meeting is to solve a problem, come with a first answer. Starting from scratch is inefficient.

5. Lead the meeting

Too many meetings lack structure and direction - you need to lead the meeting and keep people on tract.

6. Follow up

Hopefully your meeting produced some decisions and actions. To make sure these actually happen, you have to follow up... people are busy!

Conclusion

Meetings consume a lot of peoples time. Many hours are wasted by defaulting to another meeting when there are much better ways to make progress.

A little bit of thought can save hundreds of hours each year for your team.

You can watch the full recording of the presentation below: