Last Friday, we had our second ever workshop as a team. We all agreed that it’d be the best way to spend our time working on planning, discussing strategies, and learning new ways to finalize ideas. After our first workshop, we realized that we need to spend our time more efficiently and decided to work on ways we could improve time management and make our discussions more effective. We would like to share a few ideas we tried, which proved to be successful and may be helpful to make your meetings more efficient too. 

However, we know how hard it is to keep track of time and not get carried away with endless topics to discuss. To avoid over-talking about one subject and ensure on-point, short, concise discussions, we decided to implement the idea of the ‘standing up while talking’ technique.  Standing up during the meeting helps to awaken both: body and mind. The speaker wants to speak more on-point, so he can faster sit down and feel comfortable again. We trick ourselves because we know – public speaking can be pretty uncomfortable. This technique proved to be successful, and long after the workshop we were still amazed at how well we managed to track time, keep the discussions fruitful and also suggested this for all team online meetings. 

Also, we tried the new discussion format, called ‘Lean Coffee’, introduced by our colleague as a very efficient and powerful meeting facilitation technique. Lean Coffee is a structured but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather topics, build their agenda, vote on issues that interest them, and begin talking about subjects favoured by most. This meeting style is gaining attraction within Agile teams. Discussing the most relevant topics, it’s an efficient use of everyone’s time. Also, giving attendees the opportunity to set their agenda creates a more engaging atmosphere.

We constantly seek new ways to improve processes in all areas, including our daily meetings and workshops. Once we started organising meetings with a more significant number of people, we noticed that they became ineffective. Our solution was to try different methods, such as those listed above, to improve how we conduct meetings, workshops, and other group activities. These experiments proved successful so far, so we decided to continue working on them. How do you make your meetings more efficient? Share your ideas and thoughts in the comments.