Use Cosapien And Six Sigma To Run More Productive Meetings
In any organisation the time spent in meetings is a major investment. Meetings can be optimised and made more efficient by deploying Six Sigma processes and using Cosapien to automate minute taking and task management. Here are some insights to show you how:
Set A Clear Purpose For The Meeting
In order to ensure that all attendees are adequately prepared and can thus contribute to the meeting, everyone needs to understand the meeting’s purpose.
Give Everyone Sufficient Notice
Empower the meeting attendees by letting them know about the meeting well in advance. Send a reminder about the meeting a day or two beforehand.
Select Key People Only
Only invite people whose attendance is essential to the purpose of the meeting.
Create An Agenda And Send It Out In Advance
Use Cosapien to email a meeting’s agenda to all participants, as well as those tasks whose will be determined by the outcome of the meetings.
Scott Thor recommends that sticking to five primary agenda items can help keep a meeting focused:
- Introduction to the project
- Lean Six Sigma (LSS) overview
- Project charter agreement
- Actionable items
- Meeting cadence
Once your agenda is captured in Cosapien’s meeting management interface, it can be used as the basis for the minutes.
Once set, the meeting chair should ensure the agenda is followed. This is essential for keeping the meeting purpose-driven and ensuring it is wrapped up on time.
Be Punctual And Start The Meeting On Time
You need to start on time to finish on time. Don’t spend too long on one particular agenda item, at the risk of the rest of the list. If you can summarise an agenda point, do so and move on. (Tip: put the intended duration as part of each agenda heading, this will help run meetings according to their time commitment.)
State The Purpose Of The Meeting At The Beginning
Remind the attendees what the objective of the meeting is to keep everyone on track and to ensure members understand what their contributions are. Do not allow anyone to deviate from the agenda items.
Take Accurate Meeting Minutes
Cosapien makes it easy to capture decisions, action items and due dates, so that the meeting chair can contribute freely to the meeting discussions.
The minutes should be shown to everyone present before the end of the meeting. They should also be distributed to all meeting attendees as soon as possible after the meeting is concluded. Cosapien makes this easy, as it automatically distributes the minutes to all attendees and the distribution list upon publishing.
Manage Different Behaviour Patterns
Invite feedback from introverted team members and limit those who speak too much.
Conflicts can be mitigated if certain guidelines are established beforehand. Ensure that all tasks are clear and understood by the people who they are requested of.
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