Have you ever attended a meeting where everyone left feeling more confused than when they came in? Meetings can be a vital tool for businesses to communicate and collaborate, but they can easily turn into time-wasters without a clear plan of action. If you want to make the most of your workday, you need to be prepared to get a step ahead with the best possible practices.
What's the purpose?
The first step in leaving a meeting with a clear plan of action is to know its purpose before you go in. Ask yourself: What are we trying to accomplish? What are our goals? Ask yourself not just what the team wants out of it, but what you need from it, personally.
Knowing the answers to these questions before the meeting begins can help you stay on track and get the most out of the conversation. When you've got a clear goal, you can set your route to get there. When you're working to an outline of the forward plan, you can ask the right questions to fill it in.
What's the action?
It's easy to talk around a point, and bounce ideas around. It feels great when there is that kind of energy in the room, and you feel like you're creating an amazing idea. The question is: what then? A conversation doesn't make things happen on its own, which is why you should always bring it back round to the end result.
This will make it clear to everyone what the next steps are and who is responsible. When discussing an idea, make sure that you outline specific actions that will bring that idea to life. Finishing every conversation with specific action items will make it easier for everyone to move forward and for you to be successful.
What's yours, what's mine?
When a plan has been agreed on, it’s important to clarify who is responsible for each task. This way, everyone is clear on what they need to do, and there is no confusion later on. It's very easy to feel like you're all set when you leave a meeting with an agreed set of actions, but it's crucial to ensure that you know what will be required of you going forwards.
Make sure that when you leave the meeting, there is a list of actions with an assigned owner for each item. This way, everyone is aware of who is responsible for each task, and there is no confusion later. This leads to a more productive outcome for you - and your colleagues.
What's next?
It’s essential to look beyond a single meeting. A meeting is very rarely a one-and-done action, it is usually a step on the journey towards completion. It's important to ask yourself how each meeting, and the actions from it, will influence your future plans.
That's why clear actions and goals are so important to a successful meeting. By having conversations that lead to specific desired outcomes over time, you move incrementally towards an end goal. Meetings a key for collaboration, but collaboration should be key to your strategy.
A mindset of conversations to priorities is the key to leaving meetings with a clear plan of action. By understanding the purpose of the meeting, planning specific actions, clarifying ownership of tasks, and always looking beyond the present, you can finish every meeting with a clear path forward. Efficient meetings are vital to the success of a business or team and are worth prioritizing. Stay tuned for more in this series and follow Advanced for more content to help you power the world of work.