5 ways to make recurring meetings better

We all have them, but are your recurring meetings as effective as they could be? It doesn’t matter if it’s a planning meeting, 1-on-1, less frequent retrospective or daily stand-up. There is always an opportunity to simplify and make these meetings more effective for everyone.

Here are 5 ways you make your recurring meeting better!

This will vary based on the attendees. Look at what day of the week and time of the day typically works best to hold people’s attention and less likely that a meeting will add a distraction.

Avoid scheduling right after a lunch as people are less attentive and sometimes use their lunch to hit the gym or pick up dry cleaning.  Also, stay clear of Mondays and Fridays to reduce rescheduling due to holidays.

It’s easy when setting up a meeting to pick the people, room and set it to recur for eternity. Instead, set it to expiry after a few months. This is the ideal time to review the details and anything that may not be working.

Especially when reviewing an existing meeting request, have a close look at the people invited. Could a summary email to some reduce the head count? Look for ways to keep all stakeholders informed without needing everyone in the room.

Have a close look at the meeting agenda. Does every item still make sense? Is something missing? If you don’t have one, add one!

Have a hard look for any repetitive tasks that can be done before or after. Watching someone fill out a spreadsheet is not always the best use everyone’s time. Keep the meeting about team building, critical planning, updates or discussions needed to move forward.

When reviewing the meeting request, pause a moment to see if the topic needs to be a meeting in the first place. Can you accomplish the same thing with an informative email or online poll? Everyone’s time is valuable and we should all do our best to safeguard it.