Introducing All In.
note: this post announces our just released product for better meetings: All In
All In is the 100% free and simple way to set up meetings that work.
Why All In?
We designed the All In Meeting Guide to eliminate any objections to recommending our product to a friend or colleague. It’s not too complex, you don’t have to register, its simple, fun and intuitive.
We’re hoping that when you get a meeting invite with no agenda, you’ll feel be comfortable shooting a reply like “Do you have an agenda for this? Try All in – it’ll help.”
We hope even those who run great meetings will use it because it’s more fun and simple than what they’re using now.
Why Agendas?
Well it turns out the pathway to better meetings begins with an agenda. In fact, the best predictor of meeting success is an agenda distributed beforehand.
Our Design
We designed All In as a beautiful and simple application to help guide you through the agenda creation process. For example we ask probing questions every step of the way. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s longer than 30 minutes but less than 1 hour? NOTHING, at least according to Outlook’s Calendar.
The work day suffers from bloat, 20 minute meetings turn into 30 minute meetings, 40 minute meetings turn into 1 hour meetings and on and on for a few simple reasons.
- No one has an agenda, so everyone makes rough estimates for how long meetings should take. And no one under estimates of course.
- Parkinson’s Law – Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Reinterpreted, meetings expand so as to fill the time available from its scheduling.
- The defaults encourage it. Outlook calendar defaults to 30 minutes, which means that unless your meeting is in 30 minute or one hour increments its difficult to setup.
We have a product to tackle the agenda challenge. And the best way to guard against Parkinson’s Law is a good moderator.
The last point is also something we can easily do something about.
How to Change Your Default Meeting Length Settings in Outlook from 30 Minutes to 15 or 10 Minutes
1. Open up your Outlook calendar. If you’re using Outlook 2007 or 2010 your calendar should look something like this.
2. Right click the calendar and go to view settings.
3. Click other settings
4. Change ‘time scale’ to 15 or 10 minutes.
Note: this also changes the Zoom of your calendar, so you’ll end up with a calendar zoomed to 110-120%. You will no longer be able to view your full 8 hour day without scrolling down. I found it worth the tradeoff.
Presto! Going forward your meeting length will now default to shorter length. How about scheduling 50 minute meetings and allow people ten minute to transit from their last meeting?
Spread the wealth. Why not encourage your team to do the same?
And remember to go Allin.
Mikal
After placing as an NWEN first look forum finalist, Qworky has faced many of the same challenges other startups face. Burn rates, valuations, funding rounds. While the journey has surely been the rollacoaster promise- we remain committed to “Meetings that Don’t Suck”
Through this journey one thing we’ve learned is that the path to better meetings starts with you. Here are a few tips to transform your office into a better place for meetings.
Pre-Meeting
Conducting:
- Always distribute an agenda before hand (might we suggest allin?). Be sure to send the agenda included and separate from the outlook invite. People search their inbox for lost information before they search their calendars.
- Ask others for topics on the agenda
- Always look to include agenda items that help your meeting participants feel like co-owners in the meeting’s success
Participating:
- Ask for an agenda in advance of the meeting
- Ask if there are any action items from the prior meeting that you should be aware of
- If you have the action items from last meeting- send them out as a reminder prior to the meeting start.
Meeting
Keeping a meeting on track when you’re in a meeting is probably the toughest task of them all. If the meeting has an agenda its usually a bit easier. The challenge is that in most of the deterants to meeting success are other people. Many of these people hold loftier titles than our own.
Conducting:
- Tell everyone how much you hate unfocused meetings, as you’re sure they all do, and communicate the steps you’re taking to make this meeting a little bit better.
- If others are running late. Get started with agenda items or productive discussion before the others get there. For example, feedback on the agenda, check in of action items from the prior meeting.
- Take notes.
- When the meeting loses steam and seems to go off track, ask if this is better discussed at another meeting. Or if you can, hop in to the discussion, and say I know we have a lot to cover so can we come back to this after the meeting? You’ll be amazed at how many important discussions become unimportant when they involve staying after the meeting.
- If a meeting really becomes in a whole, stand up and start taking notes of the discussion on the white board. This focuses attention on the meeting condoctor and gives you an opportunity to ‘classify’ the discussion for the group.
Participating:
- Always ask ‘can we get started?’ if a meeting is running late.
- Take notes.
- When a discussion hits the circular loop, join in the conversation then pivot, turning to the meeting organizer and saying “I know you have a lot to cover, I’ll let you get us back on track”
- For meetings that habitually are poorly organized, be sure to schedule a key ‘meeting or appointment’ that either overlaps or immediately follows. Let the group know that you have to leave at ‘X’ time. You’ll be amazed at how well this focuses meetings.
Post-Meeting
Conducting:
- Send out meeting notes in email (be sure to put “Meeting Notes” in the email subject)
- Highlight the words ‘action items’ in the body of your email
- Always include an action item for yourself
Participating:
- If the meeting organizer seems flustered at the lack of focus in his/her meetings, ask how you can help him or her out in the future.
- Ask the meeting organizer to send out the meetings action items.
It’s not going to change your company’s meeting culture over night, but slowly you’ll see a new paradigm start to emerge as people desire better meetings with accountability and follow through.
-Mikal
So a meeting has taken place and your friend or colleague has said or done something that you really think you should give them feedback on, but how to do it without upsetting them?
Good thing 30 days of Better Meetings is here.
To give feedback here is a tactic I’ve learned:
- State one thing you think they’ve done well
- And state one area you’d like to see them improve
So for example:
Mary, thanks for presenting during this meeting. One thing I think you did really well is present some really deep analysis based on really strong research, an area I think you could improve is the pacing of your presentation. I felt like I didn’t have time to fully digest everything, so maybe next time make fewer points but spend more time discussing each?
And thats it. I find that typically people are much more willing to accept the medicine when served with sugar.
When it comes to receiving feedback, especially critical- its even easier. You should always have this one response ready to go:
Thank you for the feedback.
You’re not obligated to agree, you’re not being defensive and hopefully you’ve truly heard and understand their points. If not you can ask a clarifying question- “was there a specific point you felt rushed on, or was it the overall presentation” and again always close with “Thank you for the feedback”
Note: this works best when everyone on the team knows how to give and receive critical feedback so managers you should try and share these insights with your team.
I had a fantastic conversation recently when connecting with a new Qworky Community Member, Shelley Ryan of Killer Webinars, on the phone in light of a suggestion from Cathy Larkin (aka @CathyWebSavvyPR) on Twitter.
Ryan is a consultant for all things related to online meetings, with a keen focus on webinars. Webinars were not something that I had thought about at an especially deep level, but she quite successfully stoked my interest!
So What’s a Webinar Exactly?
But what exactly is a webinar in the first place? Read the rest of this entry »
According to Wikipedia, a perfect storm is “an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically”. Then, there’s the perfect (brain)storm. It is an event where a rare combination of ideas will develop a path or solution for an opportunity to solve for a problem or create new charters.
How exactly would you create this perfect (brain)storm, you ask? Well, the options are endless, but here are a couple of ideas to introduce this concept in your next meeting.
Creating the Perfect (Brain)storm:
- In-Person: Carve out 10-20 minutes for brainstorming. Hand out a piece of paper and writing utensil for each person. During the brainstorm session, clearly explain your goal and invite everyone to write their ideas on paper. One rule: There is no wrong idea.After 10 minutes, have everyone share their ideas with the group and prioritize as needed.For example, our goal for 30 Days of Meetings is to share actionable blog posts on “how to get the most out of your meetings”. To do so, we had to brainstorm blog post ideas. In our team meeting, we carved out 10 minutes for everyone to jot down blog post ideas on their own, in a collaborative environment (we used Google Docs). That was our perfect (brain)storm.
- Offline: The concept remains the same, except the participants would be invited to the brainstorm via email or other communication sources. Assign a location for where the ideas to be submitted, along with a deadline for completion.
Integrating a brainstorm session to your next meeting agenda can help create an inclusive list of ideas for your project (or problem). Similar to having an editor review a publication, brainstorm sessions can also serve as a second pair of eyes to ensure no idea is overlooked.
If all fails, enjoy this movie. Happy Monday!
Grab a bag of Skittles. Pass them around and have everyone in your meeting take a few. Then, it’s time to break the ice.
When was the last time someone kicked off a meeting with an icebreaker? Probably back in high school or college, right?
An icebreaker is a great activity to create a positive and collaborative dynamic before meetings. It helps participants get to know one another, which sets an inclusive environment later in the meeting and for future interactions. Often times, icebreakers are perceived as a waste of time, because they have no connection to the agenda or topic at hand; however, icebreakers are great communication tools. Read the rest of this entry »
We have gotten some really fantastic comments on our recent posts about both online “virtual” meetings and those that are face to face, developing the conversation–on the blog and on Twitter–in a direction I did not necessarily expect.
Expanding the Discussion
This began after I first posted about meeting virtually online, on which Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw Consulting commented, expanding the discussion with this:
Here’s the one thing I think we forget, just because people are contained within four walls for a face-to-face meeting does not mean that they are paying attention or engaged. We’ve assumed for years that if they are their in body, their minds are controlled by the speaker and the meeting organizers. NOT!
He is completely right, but regrettably, there doesn’t seem to be any way–aside from directly involving a person in that part of the meeting–to see where their thoughts really are at. After thinking about it, I was inspired that much more to look into the benefits face to face meetings really do provide so that I could better assess their value. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve got one word for you . . .
Plastics.
There is a great future in plastics. Will you think about it?
Of course you will. Why? Because you’ve been hooked with that timeless teaser.
Research shows there are seven types of Meetings and the purpose of many of them is to persuade- or in other words, ‘sell’ an idea or information. However, before you can sell. You need to get your audience to listen.
So how do you do that? Well, you begin by focusing on your audience’s needs. Read the rest of this entry »
So you’re going to have a meeting, and this time your meeting requires a pitch or presentation. You may not think of this until the day of- but here’s a question: When is a good time for questions?
Common practice says the time for questions is during or after a presentation. However you might want to consider a third option, questions before the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »
Interpreted from ‘Business Writing and Communication’ applied to meetings.
No we’re not talking about Nintendo Wii. Even though, those were pretty hard to find a few Christmas’ ago.
Finding the ‘We’ is all about finding identifying the shared goals between yourself and your meeting participants and finding a ‘participant’ focused way of orienting the meeting to those goals. How much better would your meeting calendar be- if every singly meeting was tailored to your own interests?
To accomplish this, there are two questions you might want to think about:
- “To what community do I and my meeting participants both belong?” Are we stakeholders in the same company? Do we work on the same project or are we members of the same department or function within an organization?
- And “Within this community, how are my fellow meeting participants and I alike and different?”
Read the rest of this entry »
