Meetings used to be a sign of productivity and success. These days, meetings are labeled as a waste of time and companies are avoiding having them as much as possible. The reason being that meetings cost money and time- two resources that businesses are careful to spend and allocate.
The cost of the lost time and opportunity due to unproductive meetings can be if there are unnecessary attendees.
In an email recently obtained by automotive website Jalopnik <https://jalopnik.com/tesla-switching-to-24-7-shifts-to-push-for-6-000-model-1825335216> Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, delivers insightful recommendations on meetings:
- “Please get rid of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.”
- “Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.”
- “Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”
The key takeaway point from Musk’s email is that when there are too many people in a meeting, it reduces the productivity of the key members involved.
Effective meetings hinge on having the right people present at the table. This saves time for coworkers who can simply read the meeting minutes, thus increasing the overall productivity of the meeting.
According to this article published in Wall Street Journal <https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-manifesto-to-end-boring-meetings-1482249683> for every additional meeting participant over seven, the likelihood of making a sound decision goes down by 10 percent. By the time you get 17 people, the chances of actually making a decision are down to zero.
Before you send out the next meeting invite, follow these steps to reduce resource costs, save valuable time, and focus on meeting goals and action items;
Plan beforehand and stick to it: In order to have successful meetings, it’s important to create a plan beforehand. Make sure the invite includes a detailed agenda and intended outcomes. This should help the attendees decide whether they should be attending the meeting or not.
Have one representative from each related area of the company: Invite only those people who meet the following criteria:
- Those who will be directly affected by things discussed during the meeting
- Those who need to quickly execute things decided during the meeting
- Key decision-makers who have a say on the matters to be discussed
- People who have special knowledge or information about the matters to be discussed during the meeting
Invite enough people to bring needed expertise: Make sure everyone attending the meeting has something to contribute to the outcome. Avoid including so many attendees that the discussion flies off course.
You can decide the number of people required to be present in a meeting depending on the meeting type:
- Problem-solving: 4-6 attendees
- Decision making: 4-7 attendees
- Agenda setting: 5-15 attendees
- Brainstorm: 10-20 attendees
These numbers can vary based on how big your team is.
Effective meetings have some things in common that differentiate them from unproductive meetings that waste people’s time and energy.
While focusing on keeping the number of people in the meeting from becoming unwieldy, it’s also important to make sure the meeting rooms are well facilitated and equipped with the right collaboration tools to make the meeting a success. What you need in your meeting room is a device that lets you connect and share your screen wirelessly from any platform without any hassle. And, Zoapi does just that.
Zoapi is not just limited to screen sharing, it also connects you to your clients and employees from across the globe with multiple video calling apps support. Zoapi supports integration into your meeting room booking services and provides on display meeting reminders. Zoapi’s intelligent analytics helps you to optimally utilize your meeting rooms and provides valuable insights on improving meeting efficiency in your organization.
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Try Zoapi Hub <https://zoapi.com/zoapi-hub-hardware/>
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