Meetings are key means to communicate in projects, but they often waste time, not add efficiency. Jennifer Bridges, PMP, shows you how to plan a productive meeting.

Here’s a shot of the whiteboard for your reference!

In Review – Meeting Planning:

Meetings can be the bane of a team member’s existence, Jennifer said. It’s not that project meetings aren’t important, it’s just that they are sometimes more of a problem, such as:

• Having the wrong people in the wrong meetings
• Having a lack of communication about the meeting
• Having a lack of clarity during the meeting
• Having a lack of planning for the meeting

That last item, Jennifer noted, if planned properly will resolve all the other issues she brought up. That will make a productive meeting and a happy team. Monitoring the health and happiness of your team may not seem like a priority, but if you want to have a successful project you have to do just that.

When planning for a productive meeting you have to ask yourself the who, what why, where and how questions more commonly associated with journalism. Here are 6 steps to effective meeting planning:

• Why? Determine the purpose of the meeting.
• What? Specify the end result of the meeting. (This is especially important for scrum meetings.)
• Who? Determine who needs to be there.
• What? Specify what information needs to be presented.
• When/Where? Specify the schedule of the meeting, such as the date, time, duration and location.
• Who/How? Notify all attendees in advance by email, text, alerts, etc.

It’s crucial you have a purpose for the meeting, have only those who need that critical information present and create an agenda to keep you on track. Consider using a to-do list or a task list tool to stay focused. Do all these things and team members won’t moan every time you call a meeting, but actually, get marching orders and feel excited about what to do next.

Lastly, it’s important to create meeting minutes to make sure you and your team members don’t forget key points about your meeting. Our free meeting minutes template is a great tool to help you with this process.

Pro-Tip: When managing remote teams, meetings are just as important, but harder to accomplish successfully. With an online project management software tool, you can get a lot of the meeting work, such as collaborating and sharing documents, out of the way, keeping the meetings short and sweet.

Take it Further: Sometimes your meetings just need a fresh take. Read about these creative ideas for staff meetings to get the team excited about meetings again.

Thanks for watching!

Transcription:

Today, we’re talking about how to plan a team meeting.

Have you ever been in a meeting, and left, and wondered why in the world you were there? It just goes to show you how important planning a meeting really is. So, anyone on a team is involved in team meetings, and there’s some general problems that arise with meetings.

First of all, the wrong people can sometimes be in the wrong meetings. Also, lack of communication about the meeting. Some people aren’t notified about the meeting or even why they’re there.

There’s also can be a lack of clarity for the meeting. Again, what’s the purpose? Why are we here? What do we hope to get out of this meeting? And then, also, there can be the lack of planning for the meeting.

So, if you do number four really well, you can also knock out one, two and three, and also make a lot of people happy.

So let’s look at a few things to incorporate when we’re planning a meeting.

Number one, we wanna determine, what is the purpose of the meeting. Why are you even having the meeting?

Number two, specify the end result of the meeting. What do you hope to gain when you leave the meeting? Do you want an important decision to be made? Do you want information to be distributed? Do you want people to have a better understanding? So what is it that you want?

Number three, determine who needs to be there. So you wanna make sure the right people are there. Respect their time. If they’re not supposed to be there, they’re not gonna be engaged and it wastes of a whole lot of time, and that computes to budget on your project.

Number four, specify what information needs to be provided. Also, let them know, are you gonna provide it or are they expected to provide the information.

Also, specify the schedule for the meeting. What’s the date? What’s the time? How long is it gonna be? What’s the duration? And where is it going to be located?

And then, be sure to notify all the attendees. And when I say that, I mean in advance, more than five minutes in advance. Give people time to plan ahead of time, incorporate it in their schedule, and be prepared for the meeting. If there’s information or data that they need to provide, they need time to do that.

So when you notify them, you wanna be sure to include the how, the what, the who, the where, the when, and the why. So let’s take a look at these.

So, how? You can send an email, a text, a broadcast, or alert, whatever the standard communication for your team is.

Also, include the what. Include the purpose, the end results you’re expecting to get from the meeting, and the information that they need to bring.

And, also, including the attendees. Let people know who else will be there. Identify the important decisions that will be made and the expected decision-makers that you need there.

And, also, let them, again, know where the location is for the meeting. Let them know the date, the time, and the duration, and then the agenda.

So, even though you planned it, you wanna be sure that, because you know, that everybody on the team knows.

So these are some things that will help you plan better with some tips, and if you need a tool that can help you plan your meeting, then sign up for our software now at projectmanager.