4 Tips for Increasing Meeting Efficiency
When important business decisions need to be made, organizing a meeting is an excellent choice. However, when a meeting isn't productive, it's basically wasted time. Knowing how to increase productivity during your next meeting can help bring a higher level of efficiency to your organization, overall. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Location
The location you choose can also play a part in how productive a meeting is. Take smart board technology, for example. If your presentation requires the input of everyone participating in the meeting, a facility with only one smart board tablet would likely slow things down because the single tablet would need to be passed back and forth around the room. Given this scenario, a business meeting facility that provides multiple tablets would be a better suit to ensure greater productivity.
Seating Assignments
A fun, play on the game musical chairs can be especially helpful for longer meetings. After each break, rearrange the seating assignment in the meeting space so that everyone is sitting some place different, each time. Staying in the same seat throughout the entire meeting can cause the attendees to slip into a comfort zone. Changing around the seating assignment can increase alertness, which can cause everyone to be more engaged and more actively involved in the meeting, which ultimately increases productivity.
Food Selection
Prepackaged chips, soda and cookies seem like convenient food selections for a meeting. However, you can enhance the outcome of your meeting by serving known productivity boosting foods. Berries, bananas and carrots are just some of the options you should consider serving. Eating these selections can boost your brain power by as much as 20%. The more brain power, the faster the team will be able to tackle the issues at hand.
Meeting Length
While it would seem more efficient to try to tackle a long list of issues in a single meeting, the opposite is sometimes true. Creating an agenda like this can cause attendees to feel overwhelmed, which can cause people to lose much of their focus. Without focus, there is no productivity. As it inconvenient as it might seem, if you have a number of issues to address, it's better to break this up into several, shorter meetings with small agendas.
A focus on productivity during your business meeting can spill over into the everyday practices and processes of your organization, helping you increase efficiency throughout your organization.
