How to make company meetings more productive.

We all know what it’s like when you get that email or notice that you are going to be having a company meeting, it’s the dread of is this going to be productive or a waste of an hour? It seems these days this is happening a lot where company meetings are going to stale, even Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has been interviewed on how he keeps meetings productive.
Here are some of the ways we handle our company meetings to make sure they are staying on track, and that they are productive.

Make sure you need to meet

I know in our company if I call for a company staff meeting it’s because I have clear cut things I need to discuss or let everyone know about. Make sure that if you are scheduling a meeting, that it’s not something that could have been sent out in an email.

Set strict time limits

When I must post that we are having a company meeting, I always let my employees know it’s only going to run an hour or whatever time frame I think, although I only try to do hour-long meetings. That means I must ensure when I am putting my agenda together, I leave 15 minutes in the end for any questions and answers because when that hour is up, then I want to wrap up the meeting and get everyone off and on their way.

Create and distribute a meeting agenda ahead of time. It’s important to know why you are calling a meeting in the first place, and the best way to know why and to keep on task is to have an agenda. If you make your agenda and stick to it and distribute it out to everyone before your meeting, there shouldn’t be any surprises during the meeting.

Put a cap on meeting size

Since we are a 24/7 business this is easy for us because we must have more than 1 meeting, but this also helps so that it’s more evened out with numbers attending. When you have too many people and all those people wanting to input ideas, suggestions or questions it can make your meeting run over. So, even if you must have more than 1 meeting it can help with evening out those questions etc.

Start your meeting on time

If you tell everyone your meeting will be at 10 am, then start it at 10 am. If someone is running late, then make them come to a different meeting, but it’s not fair to those who were on time, to have to wait until someone who is running late gets there.

Stay focused

If you need to make time limits for each agenda item, then make time limits and stick to them. If someone brings up something off agenda, and you are close to running over then ask them to save their item for a discussion after the meeting or until the next meeting.

Closing Thoughts

Meetings are a great way to get important information out to everyone at one time, and by keeping these tips in mind it should help you stay productive in your meeting. If you have other tips you would like to share, please do so below!