Online Meetings Gone Wrong

With the increased number of folks teleworking due to Covid-19, my Twitter feed is full of online meeting horror stories. As someone who spends 20+ hours a week in online meetings it would be hypocritical to laugh, because it's nothing I haven't seen before.

Over the years I've compiled from 'good habits/best practices' that I've shared with my co-workers. Some of the I learned the hard way, so hopefully I can save you the embarrassment of making the same mistakes. Others might seem obvious, it's useful to have a good checklist to review once and a while.

Online Meeting Tips

Efficient Meetings Are Effective Meetings

Too many of the meetings I attend are neither efficient nor effective.

Here are the keys to running an effective meeting:

1. The meeting needs an agenda (even an informal one... a blank meeting invite is a huge red flag.

2. There should be a designated note taker for for the meeting who sends out meeting minutes (or a general summary) after the meeting.

3. Meeting should have outcomes: Action items

   • I consider myself fortunate when I don't have any action items out of a meeting, but someone should. Otherwise we should never have to speak on this matter again. Ever
   • Action items need due dates, otherwise they will never get done.

4. Your internal organization has free/busy information for meeting scheduling. Use it.

   • Inviting someone who is already booked without confirming they can attend first automatically makes them an optional attendee for your meeting.
   • When meeting with external resources, confirmation they can attend the day before or morning of the meeting should be done by the meeting organizer if they are the reason for the meeting.

5. Short by default: Gmail and Outlook/Exchange have an option for short meetings (25 minutes instead of 30, 50 minutes instead of an hour).

   • Manage the clock. The meeting organizer should feel free to chime in with "time check" if it's 30 minutes into the meeting and the group is still on agenda item 1 of 20. Maybe it is important and the rest of the items will need to wait, but more likely either folks have gone down a rabbit hole or are not being respectful of other people's time. This is a great time to table an item, hand out action items and move on.
   • Give people time back. If you are efficient and done with what is on the agenda, you don't need to invent new things to talk about. That's just punishment for GTD.
   • Early is on time, on time is late, late is never acceptable. If this is your meeting, you should be there before the meeting starts and confirm your audio/video/presentation is working as expected.

6. Give the meeting 100% of your attention... unless you don't need to. With an in person meeting it is incredibly rude to be on your phone or surfing the web on your laptop while other people are speaking. But in online meetings there are times where you may be completely optional or only needed for a portion of the meeting. If that is the case:

   • Work out a system with the meeting organizer or party who invited you to determine what they need from you.
   • When they need you to chime in ask them to cue you into what is required by saying something like ".... how would you handle 'thing you haven't been listening to but can be summarized in 2 sentences'? By using your name before asking the question it alerts you that you're now supposed to be listening.

7. Mute your line. Better to fill in the 'sorry I was on mute' conference call Bingo square than to have everyone hear you flush.... just trust me on this one.

8. Video - great for team building meetings, otherwise... I'm generally against it. I don't think I will ever win the battle, but fortunately I have a lot of 'mysterious' video driver issues that I can't be bothered to figure out.

9. In fact... this meeting probably could have just been an email.

10. If you joined via computer audio and there is a dial in number handy... have it close by if you are an active participant. Alternatively, if dialed in be prepared to connect via computer audio if the call drops.

#betterMeetings #conferenceCall #meetingAgenda #letsGetStarted #sorryIwasOnMute