The checklist for conducting an effective meeting: What to do before the meeting, during, and after!
Conducting effective meetings is an art and a science. It is a multi-faceted challenge and it is a team effort. However, there are still some basic things that we can do to help avoid meeting inefficiencies.
Before the meeting
- Clarify what are you are trying to accomplish?
- Determine if a meeting is the best way to accomplish this objective?
- If so, does it need to be face-to-face or virtual?
- Who should be in the meeting?
- How long does it need to be?
- Prepare and send clear objectives, agenda, and logistics
- Share supporting material ahead of time
- Send a reminder
During the meeting
- Assign clear roles (facilitator, time keeper, note taker, etc.)Co
- mmunicate objectives and agenda (again)
- Ask if more items need to be added to the agenda
- Communicate how participation will be handled (especially for virtual meetings)
- Engage the participants (ask the observers for their input)
- Ask questions, make suggestions, stay flexible, but don’t hesitate to facilitate (it is your role and your responsibility)
- Stay strategic, think 80/20
- Summarize key decisionsConfirm action items
- Schedule potential follow-ups
- Have participants fill out feedback forms
After the meeting
- Send meeting notes and action items
- Review evaluation forms/feedabck
- Identify lessons learned and future improvements
Additional Resources
The Effective Meetings workshop
Founder and principal of People-OntheGo, has more than fifteen years of experience in the software industry. Pierre has founded several companies including a financial software company in 1987 (Computer Trends, Inc.), an e-CRM company in 1995 (Imparto Software Corporation), raised several multi-million dollar funding rounds, and completed two successful acquisitions. In the last few years, Pierre's interest centered around bridging the gap between technology and people. He founded People-OntheGo to help corporate users manage e-mail and digital communication tools more effectively, and Digital-OntheGo to help organizations take full advantage of the new advances in digital video and web distribution, both part of the OntheGo Technologies L.L.C. Pierre holds a Master's degree in Engineering from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and has completed several Executive Education programs at the Stanford Graduate School of Management (Stanford, California).
