Improve your meeting efficiency for Project Management

Meetings, meetings, meetings, Oh so many meetings...

Meetings are a very popular and important tool for communicating and collaborating. But, there are many cases of meeting overload in projects and organizations in general.
So here are some of my top tips on making your meetings more effective and efficient.
Always have a plan, make sure you set a purpose and agenda and it is shared prior to the meeting
Have timings against agenda items and a time keeper, this helps keep things on track
Document and distribute minutes of the meeting
Assign actions throughout the meeting with due dates
Review previous actions at the start of the meeting
Only schedule the meeting for the length of time required, if you need half an hour, don't book an hour, if you need 15 minutes, only book 15 minutes
Make sure you invite the right people
Be prepared. If you need to have thought about the items on the agenda prior or done pre-reading, make sure you do it
Provide pre-reading materials instead of trying to get everyone to read the materials in the meeting
Prepare meeting principles or guidelines to encourage desired behaviors such as punctuality and not answering calls in meetings
You can use the above as a bit of a checklist whenever you are setting a meeting.
Share these pointers with your team members and colleagues to encourage a consistent approach.
Do you have meeting overload? Apply the pointers above and I guarantee you will see efficiencies in your meetings.

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