Productivity is key to success across the world of work. Time not spent achieving progress is a drain on resources for any organisation, and effective meetings can be an opportunity to raise your team’s efficiency. Driving an effective meeting and ensuring quality conversations at every opportunity is your ticket to raising your organisation’s success.
In our 2023/24 Trends Report, we discovered that 17% of senior leaders counted “tackling inefficiencies” as their top organisational challenge. In order to solve this challenge, inefficiency has to be tackled in every part of your organisation, making the most of every opportunity to raise your team’s productivity. You can do this by focusing on how you lead your meetings, putting efficiency and productivity at the heart of your practice.
Driving the agenda
Preparation is key. A clear agenda can ensure that your meeting is effective and focused, which should be connected to your team’s key goals. A clear agenda drives an organised meeting, but it can also be useful to ensure flexibility throughout, giving your team the room to bring news ideas and more creativity to the problems you face.
Achieving that kind of organisation relies on effective data management, making sure that you have the information you need to make the right decisions. A clear, high-quality agenda relies on including having clear information to support your team to have a productive and effective meeting. Ensuring that your data is available and accurate is vital to making that possible, which means having reliable tools that support your data management.
Driving creativity
When you have a well-written agenda, you can support your team to make the most of their time in a meeting. A highly effective team can create new ideas and provide innovative solutions when they’re well supported. Having a clear view of the information you rely on can allow creative and perceptive professionals to make the connections that give your organisation that vital edge.
It’s also important to create an environment where your team have the freedom to share and bring new ideas to the table. Negativity and strictly siloed thinking block creativity and innovation, which is a drain on the productivity of your team. Providing an open and listening environment fosters innovation, while having the right information and insights available keeps your team moving in the right direction.
Driving engagement
One of the hardest skills to master is the ability to keep your team engaged through complex and difficult meetings. Meetings that achieve nothing and feel like they’re stuck in one place can drag down team morale and cause your colleagues to become disengaged. Keeping everyone moving with purpose towards a common goal is vital to ensuring your team’s success.
Keeping your meetings dynamic, focussed on the future, can ensure that your team remains engaged. Your team should see that the meeting you are having are making a difference, having a positive effect on your goals. Ineffective and inefficient meetings can deal a crushing blow to the effectiveness of your team and will sap productivity from your organisation.
Driving success
A successful meeting doesn’t just rely on the right attitude and engaging a team for the duration. Success relies on producing positive outcomes that meet clear goals – goals that you need to set out in advance. You should be able to articulate the goals and outcomes of a meeting before it begins, and one without these elements is likely to be a drain on efficiency and productivity. Success begins in planning, so make sure you plan what you need to get out of your meeting before you begin.
You should also be able to clearly record and measure your success – in qualitative, if not quantitative, terms. Your meeting should be tied to your team’s and your organisation's goals, so the tools you use for record-keeping and data management day-to-day will be vital in this process. Having clearly recorded and accessible data through a reliable digital solution can make this far easier. It can also make a significant difference to have a dedicated tool for organising, recording and measuring the outcomes of meetings.
Our Meetings and Board Management solution – part of our dedicated Governance and Risk Management solution – can provide your organisation with these capabilities. We also have a range of dedicated tools to support your organisation’s goals through our sector-focused portfolios. Book a call with an advisor to learn more.