"Meeting" the "Objectives"

As an individual with many roles we attend distinct types of meetings every day. ONLY but SIGNIFICANT difference of meetings from yesterday to today is that all of them are now happens remotely.

Successful Meeting, Understand the basics

I was exploring the critical success factors of making a meeting worthwhile for anyone and everyone attending meetings, which I've notice that there a many researches done on the subject and I found this blog post by Elise Keith on Meeting Execution: The Underlying Structure of Meetings that Work pretty much informative and interesting structured for anyone interests about how, why and what on meetings.

Meetings Today, from my perspective

Let's start with my personal opinion on why meetings are not productive to the extent that we expect.

My perspective will be simple as we see things in real life. It includes the object, the light and the person.

Types of Meetings, from my perspective

1. Regular Meetings - Mostly a monthly meeting which is organized to discuss the progress of the things and add some more action items to be achieved by next meeting.
2. Recurrent Meetings - These are mostly the formal meetings which is scheduled weekly, bi-weekly or monthly to just gather around and have some casual chats.
3. Information Sharing Meetings - This type may also belong to regular or recurrent meetings, but the significant different is that it has more of a Lecture than a collaboration.
4. "I'm the ONE" Meetings - Meetings that is been organized to show what you have achieved or learned.

Before the Meeting, from my perspective

I have observed over the time that many of the meetings organized and people attending them has no idea what are the objectives of the meeting and/or no preparation at all.

1. Meeting Organizer - One who is organizing the meeting, irrespective of whether meeting is organized behalf of someone else must know the key objectives of the meeting.
2. Meeting Agenda - I'm not referring to build an agenda for an event, but it must include 2 or 3 points that is going to be discussed. This will give an idea for personal to be prepared for the meeting.
3. Meeting Title - This is importantly serving two aspects, i. Communicate the Objective of the Meeting ii. Easy to revisit the meeting, the communications and everything else related to the meeting. Ex: I use this --> "|" to group meetings and give quick idea what the meeting is about. Check the following Example.

1. Schedule the Meeting - Date, Time, Place, Required & Optional Resources. It is important to give sufficient attention to all these items and put them in place consciously to one who get the request will act accordingly.

At the Meeting, from my perspective

All what is need at a meeting is Participation x 3 times. Better NOT to act like the 3 Wise Monkeys at the meeting.

1. Participation - Active Listening, it is important to respect anyone talks at the meeting, better not to distract but showing that you are listening has a value. Ex: may be nodding or acknowledge with simple words like (Yes, Agree or Ok) would do.
2. Participation - Right Responses, even if the question is not pointed at you, it is best to respond if you have information, opinion or observation. This will encourage the rest of the personal in the meeting to open to the discussion.
3. Participation - Take Notes, Keep a note book next to you where you can take notes, taking notes on Computer or Smart Phone would looks futuristic but it has enough and more other items that would distract your focus and you would look like disrespecting the others in the meeting.

After the Meeting, from my perspective

In my opinion, the most important thing would be the "Meeting Minutes", it's best to put forward at-least couple of bullet points where you can refer to later.

• Meeting Minutes - It may be a personal note or public note if you called the meeting.
• Action Items - It is also important to keep track of the action items that was agreed at the meeting, meeting minutes must contain action items with a person responsible for the activity.
• Follow-ups - It is also important to appoint a person to look into the follow-ups. That can be another action item.
• Follow-up Meetings - Certain meetings might require follow-up meetings, it is more of an outcome of the discussion which happens out of the meeting. Person who had appointed to follow-up must take the decision on having a follow-up meeting.

New Normal Meetings, My Suggestions

As I suggested, that the main difference from the yesterday's to today's meeting is that most of them are now REMOTE, using phone calls & collaboration platforms (such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco WebEx and etc).

All what I suggested above are still valid while I would suggest few key things that you could do to improve remote meetings

Areas of Improvement

1. Read the article by Elise Keith, it'll give a further insight to how to improve the quality of the meeting
2. Choose the Right Platform, if it's a platform that connects the 3 aspects of the meeting (Before, Between & After) would be the best. The experience I have with Microsoft Teams is unmatchable for anything else I have used.
3. Have some camera, superior quality microphone & in-built speakers would take you long way.
4. Explore software such as Krisp - AI enabled cloud noise cancellation software, this would be an added advantage.

Great, Let's have a Meeting ....