How do you measure the quality of your meetings?
Peter Henry
49 replies
Most people complain that the meetings suck, but some meetings suck less than others. How do you go about measuring the quality of your meetings? Is it just a gut feeling or do you use any tools/metrics?
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Fernando Pessagno@fer_momento
aiCarousels.com
By how long it takes for everyone to start falling asleep.
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@fer_momento Haha XD
Re:Schedule
That would depend on the purpose of meeting. Some meetings are for collaborative decision making, some to learning/teaching, others are or persuading. For example, the quality for a sales meeting is very different than the quality for an engineering weekly sync up.
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Re:Schedule
@phenry20 There are two sets of criteria related to this 1, directly related to the desired outcome of the meetings 2, general meeting hygiene. Criteria related to 1 would be : Did we distribute the information that was required? Did we unearth problems hiding beneath the surface? Did we make the necessary decisions? Etc. Criteria related to 2 would be : Were we efficient with our time? Were the right people in the room? Emotional hygiene like were participants happy with the meeting? Did they feel heard? etc.
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Re:Schedule
A meeting is quality when it gives some results. A follow up report helps estimate.
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@julia_shandrokha What kind of results do you look for?
@phenry20 It depends on the goals of the meeting. There have to be decisions made: for example, if the meeting is for planing a campaign, you have to come up with a plan and a roadmap in the end. If it's a review meeting, you need to come to some conclusions and have a list of what have been achieved and what has to be corrected or what to do next. If it's a creative meeting, you need ideas to be approved.
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@julia_shandrokha Ok so essentially there needs to be some goal and a way to validate that the goal has been reached? How do you determine if the goal has been reached? Is it based on consensus from meeting attendees?
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@julia_shandrokha Definitely agreed, agendas and meeting goals are important :). Last question, where do you put your meeting goals and agenda? Is it in the meeting description on your calendar or do you use a note taking tool?
A remote working solution.
For me the key things are: 1) if the meeting couldn't have been an email, 2) if we managed to cover all items on the agenda, 3) if there are actionable takeaways and insight, 4) if we developed an action plan to start working on as soon as we wrapped the meeting.
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@maya_ovice Thanks for the comment! Quick question: How do you determine whether a meeting should be an email or not?
I usually just think about the problems solved during the meeting. What were the questions we had going into it and what solutions did we leave with? This usually helps me gauge how effective the meeting was.
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@paul_vanzandt Do you usually know the problems you're trying to solve before the meeting starts? And how do you ensure everyone is aligned with the solutions?
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@paul_vanzandt That's awesome :). I'm curious, what tool do you use to keep track of your action items?
Making notes and lists definitely helps because important stuff can get lost during long discussions. At the end of the meeting or afterward, it's effective to have a rundown of the items discussed and made into an action plan. Then at the next meeting, you can begin by reiterating the points made in the previous discussion and what each team member has done.
In my point of view, high-quality meetings bring results, and this strategy makes that happen, team members are not lost and know what to do next.
@phenry20 When I make notes for myself, I usually just write them down in a notebook, edit them during the meeting, and can either clarify some points during the discussion or after the meeting with my boss. Then I create cards in Trello with all of the tasks that need to be done.
My boss usually shared her notes in the department's group in Slack so that they could be further discussed in a thread and wouldn't be lost by tagging each member there. Of course, if your department's chat is constantly overflowing with posts, it may be a good idea to create a group just for meeting notes.
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@anna_mandziuk Thanks for the comment! When you make notes during meetings do you share them with others or are they personal notes? Also curious what you use for meeting notes
Re:Schedule
@phenry20 @anna_mandziuk Did you run into any problems with this process?
@phenry20 @girish_w Not really at this point with my current team.
However, I did run into issues with this system in my past workplaces, because the manager wasn't consistent in taking notes and sharing them. Which is why some points would get lost, and tasks wouldn't be done. Hence, it is important to be consistent with this process, otherwise it won't work.
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@anna_mandziuk That's super interesting. I like the idea of sharing them on Slack for further notes and creating action items on Trello to not lose track of action items :).
Without data or at least an action plan, any meeting is just a waste of time. We need at least one of them during a meeting.
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@christopher_moon1 Can you elaborate on what you mean by data? Where should this data live?
@phenry20 I mean operational data of your business. There is inefficiency in business operations and meetings. For instance, at weekly sales meeting, does a head of sales have in-depth breakdown or real data on why revenue is higher or lower than planned? If so, the meeting must be actionable. None likes a guess-work.
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@christopher_moon1 Ah I see. Thanks for elaborating :). With that being said, how do you go about evaluating the quality of meetings at your company? Do you analyze only the meetings you're apart of? Or do you just evaluate the overall operational efficiency of the business and view that as meetings are good?
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@christopher_moon1 Awesome! Thanks for sharing :)
Elemeno AI-Ops
The amount of learning or teaching
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@lucasbmiguel Interesting. So how do you go about measuring how much learning or teaching has occurred in the meeting?
Elemeno AI-Ops
@phenry20 well, both are a two-way channel. On my end I don't do any formal measurement, it's more based on how much new information I retained and the amount of interesting topics I was able to contribute to. On the other end I usually talk with people about how specific meetings went in different opportunities, like in a coffee place or a 1-1. I think that as long as the team involved in the meetings is not feeling it's being counter-productive it's all good.
The less I speak, the more I enjoy :p
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@ujjawal_sharma Haha touche
Verticalls
We use our own tool, Verticalls. It's an application that adapts to video conferencing tools like Teams and turns video conferences into KPI's. In addition, we can connect our CRM to our videoconference so we save time and data!
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@enola_vedovotto Cool product :). One thing I noticed however is that it's geared towards sales meetings. How do you go about measuring the quality of non-sales meetings?
Verticalls
Feedback afterwards the meeting. If it brought us some new ideas, insights, etc. and some results are seen - it's valuable. Also, a plan is always good.
Btw, we’re launching in late May or the beginning of June. Check out our upcoming PH page: www.producthunt.com/upcoming/eff...
Our project is called: Effecto. It’s an app for detailed habits, health, symptoms, and meds tracking. Pretty much for everything that is related to your physical or mental health and every daily factor that can affect you.
WorkHub
In many cases, it's easy to measure the quality of meetings. You can rely on other people's judgement or do a self-evaluation of your own performance. But even if you're sure your meeting was a success and that most attendees will be pleased with the outcome, there are only so many ways you can assess performance. Today, there are a handful of metrics that can be used to measure the quality of a meeting: The number of ideas generated
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@qudsia_ali Thanks for the response :). You mentioned that there are a handful of metrics to measure meeting quality. Are there specific tools you use to help with metrics?
Regarding self evaluation, what are some criteria you use to measure the quality of your meeting?
SetOps
A very simple measure for me is a good meeting ticks things off your list and give you a new set of things to do 📝
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@arunpariyar So essentially having an agenda before the meeting and having action items post meeting?
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@arunpariyar Nice! That's definitely a surefire method for effective meetings :)