In this post, I want to talk about a real cool way that you can stand out at work, achieve maximum productivity and efficiency, and eliminate some meetings throughout the day.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to have lots of meetings at work throughout the day. Some meetings are required and useful, but there are some that may not be necessary.
Sometimes, we set up meetings because we’re used to this old way of thinking about sharing information, which may not be very efficient.
Watch the video:
How can you make meetings more effective and efficient?
When it comes to putting together a plan for a meeting, a lot of times people will send a meeting invite with no agenda included. It will just be like, “Okay, we need to meet at this time.”
That’s not really efficient. So, what can you do?
Set an agenda
If you’re the one who’s scheduling a meeting, be sure to set an agenda and include it in your invite. It can be just a simple 3-point or 5-point high-level topics for discussion, so that people will be more prepared for the meeting. You can be more efficient and not waste time trying to get everybody on the same page when you start your meetings.
Ask for an agenda
If you’re the receiver of a meeting request and you don’t see information about what the meeting is about, just reach back out and ask the organizer what topics are to be discussed.
They may not even know. It may get them to be more proactive in sending it out and make more effective use of the time on both ends. So, everybody has a win-win type of scenario.
The key takeaway here is just being proactive and thinking, “How can I be more effective and more efficient in utilizing my time throughout the day?”
What is the no. 1 key to eliminating unnecessary meetings?
A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to get more involved in online content creation. I wanted to share some of the knowledge I had around technology and productivity, so I started using this tool.
What is this tool?
It’s video.
I would record videos, upload them to YouTube, and share them with whoever needed and wanted to learn that subject.
What I’ve realized is that, over the past 10 years that I’ve worked for a couple of companies, there’s been a lot of changes in the way that we utilize technology. So, there’s a lot of tools at our fingertips that we may not realize are there, just like being able to easily record videos.
It’s now very easy to record videos to help communicate a message to your team or to your boss. If you have your own company or business, you can put together some training videos or onboarding videos, so you can go ahead and delegate tasks to your team – all without needing to have meetings.
Whether you’ve got an offshore or an onshore team, it doesn’t matter. You can share information with them. You don’t need to be there to handhold your staff. All you need to do is give them a link to the video, and they’re all set.
What are the advantages of using videos instead of having meetings?
You don’t need to set up a common time to meet
If I have to set up an individual meeting with 10 people on my team to go over the same thing because they can’t all meet at the same time, it’s not very efficient nor is it the best use of my time.
If I we’re to record a video on the topic, a 5-minute or 10-minute video, then share it with my team, they can access the video and watch it at their own leisure. I don’t need to waste any more time in my day trying to catch up and chase people. It may seem very trivial, but it’s a very important thing to consider.
I recently got my team at work set up with video. It’s been such a great tool for me in other areas of my life that I know it’s going to help my team and myself be more effective and efficient when it comes to sharing information and minimizing the amount of wasteful time. We can avoid redundant meetings about answering basic questions that could be answered in a quick video clip.
You can record over-the-shoulder types of videos
If you’re trying to demo something onscreen, especially if you’re involved in the technology space and doing any support or development work, being able to show people how to do things on the screen is much more impactful than any Word document or audio file.
Seeing the demo and hearing that audio explanation at the same time goes a long way.
How do you get started?
If you have access to tools, like Camtasia for PC or Screenflow for Mac, utilize it to record your videos. You can record training videos or FAQs, and then just find a place to store. You can find a place to store it on the corporate internet and just give people a link. If you have your own business, you can sign up for GSuite, which used to be Google Apps for Work. You can host your files in the Cloud.
The other way to do it is to just upload it to YouTube. If you don’t work in an industry where there’s a lot of privacy and security guidelines around what content you can share, then this is another option.
That’s one thing you always want to do. Make sure you’re not just uploading to the public Cloud if you’ve got proprietary information involved. So, it’s best to check with your company on what those policies are. They may also have a solution for you.
I’m going to be using Office 365. I’m pretty excited. It’s a Microsoft solution, but I’ve used lots of different things in the past including Google. The important thing is to have a platform where you can share your videos.
I hope this helps you think about how you can be more effective and productive in your day. More specifically, how you can eliminate meetings that are not necessarily going to be the best use of your time.
If you have any questions or would like to share your experience using videos, leave them in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
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