How to save a lot of time at work by running productive meetings?

I ran 1000s of meetings in the corporate world and off it — and these practices I learned will save you a lot of time.

8 min readOct 2, 2022

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Running productive meetings — A Photo by Adrien Olichon, from Pexels

I ran 1000s of meetings in the corporate world and off it — and these practices I learned will save you a lot of time. — Article Layout

A typical day at my job as a Software Group R&D manager would consist of a lot of meetings, Face to Face with people or over the phone.

In Many days — back-to-back meetings, and a lot of the time I had double and triple bookings in parallel.

And COVID just made it worse…

The number of meetings I had in a day increased to a point where my days would consist of back-to-back meetings.
I was in meetings from 8 am to 8 pm sometimes, even more, doing my actual work only at the end of the day.

As COVID dies out and we started to get back to the office, I had hoped that this state of “Meeting Overflow” will return to normal also.

But no — the new normal has become too many meetings instead of short phone calls or messages.

This had to Stop!!!

So, I hit the online bookshelf in search of methods, processes, and best practices to help me make meetings more productive.

5 Mindset changes that will make you more productive by treating meetings in a different way.

Besides having best practices to make meetings as efficient as possible — it’s important to have a mindset that treats and schedules meetings in the best possible way — so that they will be productive too — Check this Article for more information.

Productive, Effective, and Efficient Meetings Best Practices for work meetings.

So, you came to the conclusion that you need to have a meeting after all — Good.

Now — let’s make it productive.

The first thing that you need to understand is that we divide a meeting into 3 phases :
according to the “40–20–40 rule” —
40% of the work is in prep before the meeting,
20% is the time of the meeting,
40% of the work happens after the meeting.

PRE-MEETING

Set a very Clear Objective for what you want to achieve in the meeting.
— Do you want a decision?
— Do you want to generate ideas?
— Do you want to communicate something?
— Do you want to make plans? — …
Create an Agenda:
a. Put each item that you want to discuss on the agenda. Write also the amount of time you allocate to it, and who is the one presenting (See suggestion for template below).
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b. It’s best to reframe your agenda items into questions, that way you have a clear understanding, an answer, when the item is completed.
Invite only the relevant people:
This is one of the most important problems in meetings, we invite everyone…
—
a. Especially in the corporate world, we do not consider the cost of meetings. BUT, if you treat it as if you have invited outside consultants to assist you and you pay each one by the hour your outlook will completely change. consider the $ spent in the meeting you have set: meeting time x people invited x average hourly salary = This meeting cost. Do you really need all these people?
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b. All people should be on the agenda or must be part of shaping a decision in the agenda — if not, consider if you need them in the meeting.
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c. We often invite people so that we do not hurt people’s feelings by not inviting them. If you know that they are either irrelevant or they will sidetrack the meeting. Either put them in “Optional” or discuss up-front with them on what is their take on the issue.
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d. Above 10 people is too much.
Prepare the materials before the meeting.
AVOID PowerPoint if possible — better to have a document with all the info — sent upfront for people to review. You want the participants to be able to review it and understand it.
A PowerPoint is a lot of bullets but usually you cannot understand anything unless the writer is there to explain it to you. Use PowerPoint to create the flow of a discussion not to have all the material on the issue.
Send pre-meeting material for review.
a. At least 2 days before the meeting and specifically request feedback on it.
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b. Set in the agenda a slot for questions and clarifications — not for reviewing the content.
Align on “explosive” topics or issues that can side-track you from the agenda before the meeting in 1x1 with the relevant people.

MEETING TIME

Declare the meeting agenda and target at the start of the meeting.
Have the agenda visible to keep people on track, and either assign or keep track of the schedule.
Allow people, by providing Physiological Safety, to speak and voice out. Do not criticize or block people — you do not want to create an atmosphere or culture of silent people while you make decisions.
Let/push everyone to speak and say their opinions and make sure the Junior employees also talk.
a. They might have a fresh view of the issue/decision.
—
b. You want to create a culture of open discussion and not something reserved only for the senior employees.
Start a meeting with a Smile.
An open easy atmosphere before a meeting goes a long way to make a meeting much more productive and stress-free.
Get things back on track.
In a meeting, you might face someone taking the discussion to a different area than what you wanted to address or even open a side branch from the topic. In this case, there are 2 things which you can do:
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a. “Let’s take it offline” — Which means, we can talk about it later 1x1 or in a dedicated meeting. Usually when it’s something that is not relevant to the whole forum.
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b. “Let’s park it for later” — This means it’s relevant for the conversation but not in this direct section of the agenda. You need to note it down and return to it later in the conversation or the next one on this topic. But you need to make sure you do come back to it so it will not start to seem like “parking” means “shut up”.
Show up on time and demand other people to come on time.
If there is a culture of being late, then more people start being late to meetings which eventually leads to meetings starting at least 5 min late each time. We used to have a rule that if someone is late to our staff meeting — they need to bring a cake for the next one. Nobody was late after the first time (which was bad since there was no cake … :-))
Stay Physically and Mentally present.
If you start to do something else in parallel and you don’t listen, or even leave in the middle to do something else — you are signaling that this is not important for you. The rest will soon follow.
Listen with an Open Mind, Ask a lot of questions, Think before speaking and pause to listen.
You did not come to the meeting to pretend to hear other opinions and then decide on your own, if you did, no need for a meeting. So, use the time wisely to benefit from it and reach the best possible solution.
Attack the Problem and not the Person. Blaming someone is something that shouldn’t happen during a meeting. If you want to give feedback — take it for later in a one-on-one to give constructive criticism. In the meeting you can voice that you are not happy with the situation and set ground rules — but not by attacking the person.
Take and share meeting notes.
See this article on how to take Meeting Minutes Correctly. Let
Out-of-the-box discussion methods.
If you need a couple of options to create an open and honest dialog, I would suggest these two out-of-the-box methods:
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a. The Sticky Notes.
Let people write their ideas on sticky notes. The main reason is that you don’t want people to get influenced by other people to not voice out. Quieting down can happen if they see that they are different from the crowd. Then you can hang them all and work on the visually — either with names or anonymously.
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b. Add Voting on decisions.
When you have a decision that you want to agree on and you want to hear what the meeting participants think, I would suggest a simple Yes/No voting. Same as for the sticky notes before — you can do it anonymously or by a show of hands. Depends on the people in the room and how much are they open to giving their honest opinion.

POST MEETING

After the meeting is over try to share the meeting minutes and tasks as soon as possible.

These depict the decisions and actions required by the different stakeholders.

Now, the work left is to track the progress and complete your required steps also.

There is no need to schedule a meeting to track these required actions.

If there is no other decision left following the action steps — track tasks by email or other methods in your organization, like a task manager.

How to have efficient Meetings in the Corporate World?

As a high-ranking leader and manager in the corporate world, trust me, I understand…

It’s very hard to change the mindset of an organization to start using all of these best practices.
But as with any change you want to lead in an organization — You need to lead the change by example.

You need to start implementing the practices on your own, slowly but surely people will see the results and that is what will make them follow.

This will make you stand out from the rest!

Conclusion

After 1000s of meetings and learning on the subject — I am now using the above best practices and mindset to handle my meetings.

Now I can honestly say that not only that I started to like meetings — but they are also making me and my colleagues much more productive.

Try it, add a little tactic each time, and you will see how you start to shift your mindset about how a meeting can make you productive at work.