I'm embarassed to confess how many times I've gone to meetings unprepared. Too often, I remember a few minutes before, then scramble to get there. Worse--because I'm not the only one who approaches meetings this way--a lot of time is lost with small talk, recaping the agenda, and catching up people who missed the last meeting. If we are lucky--we get 15 minutes in the heart of things where the real work is done. Because meetings require one of our most important resources--time--they should be prepared for and treated as valuable. However, because they don't typically require a lot of another resource--money--we tend to schedule far too many and aren't always disciplined to make them efficient.
Luckily, the digital world offers tools to ease preparation and make meetings more effective. Here are some things to consider:
1. Digital Reminders. Simply sending a reminder can improve attendance and help people accomplish tasks they promised to do before the meeting. Scheduling your meetings through Facebook or E-vite handles the reminders automatically. Or, if inviting people via e-mail, you can create a second e-mail scheduled to "delay send" so that people receive the reminder (or a series of reminders) ahead of time (including yourself).
2. Survey Monkey. The chair of one group I'm part of always sends a Survey Monkey survey a few days before our virtual meeting to "help get everyone's head in the game." Our meetings became much more focused when he started doing this because it forced us to do some thinking about the topics before the conversations actually began.
3. Wikis and Discussion Groups. The most effective meetings are those where the issues and research are done ahead of time so that the meeting time is used only for discussion and decisions. Leveraging online tools like wikis and discussion groups maximizes the "in between meeting" times so that the face-to-face can be more effective. PBworks.com and LinkedIn are great platforms where you can set these up for free. A highly prepared organizer may also choose to encourage use of these platforms by sending out communication prior to the meeting capturing some of the highlights in a personal way, such as "Jim had a great insight when he posted...." or "Amy shared a fantastic link about...."
4. Visuals & Scribing. Whether in a face-to-face or virtual meeting, having someone capture the discussion live in a way that the group can see it can bring about understanding and concensus more quickly. Often, groups will simply have someone in the room taking minutes. More effective is doing the notes live--either graphically or typed to a screen. There are several tools for this. You can take an analog approach and simply write to a white board. (Make sure that someone snaps the image with their phone so you have the digital version to share later.) You can scribe live either on top of Powerpoint using a tablet PC or with Alias Sketchbook pro. You can use a mindmapping software to simply capture the thoughts, then find the connections between them in real time. (I happen to like Inspiration software because it is less expensive than some of the other options and works well in real-time.)
Non-digital bonus: always starting with the 'mission' of the meeting creates engagement and reminds people why they are investing their valuable time resource with you. Never let people forget why they care about being part.
