I love it when people in our strategic design company EN GARDE share their talents to the whole team. — Especially on Mondays. Thx Annalena and Gerhild.
The working week contains 5 working days, with about 8 to 10 hours of work per day, normally. But sometimes it feels like that is not enough, that there is never enough time to get all your tasks and meetings done.
Some people like them, because they feel productive while sitting around a table, sending or receiving information from others. Others are bored by them.
I am bored by meetings with zero output. By “output” I mean things like decisions being made, building a paper prototype or a funny and productive co-creation session.
Your and others’ time is something we should treat with respect, because time is a limited commodity for everyone.
Spending productive time with your colleagues just feels better than just talking at a meeting, and working together to produce real output makes a team stronger.
While looking at my calendar and reflecting on this topic, I was surprised by the time I was spending in marathon meetings each week. It made me feel unhappy, because in most of the meetings nothing really happened, nothing was produced.
When leaving the office in the evening, I was frustrated because I felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything.
I started to ask myself, how much time do I want to sit, listen and talk in informative meetings and how much time do I want to be productive for our clients with my team?
For me the ideal split is 75% productive time and 25% informational time.
Looks much better to focus on productivity and results, than just handling information. — Indeed this is just a visualization. ;-)
To make this happen, it is necessary to implement it within the whole team or company and make some rules that are easy to follow and sound like much more fun for everyone.
You need to tell your companions. Without letting them know what you are planning, this will not work out. — Remember, it takes two to set a meeting. ;-)
From day X (perhaps, tomorrow!) we will have to differentiate between two kinds of meetings. One is called the informative meeting and the other one the productive meeting. The maximum number of informative meetings should make up 25% of your meetings, the other 75% should be productive working meetings.
In your shared calendar, meetings should be marked informational or productive, such as “#INF Sales forecast for April 2016” or “#PRO Co-creation for great new insurance products”.
Productive meeting session with my EN GARDE colleagues Christina and Emanuel. — Yes it’s a costumer journey.
So you are the leader of the meeting and you set the goal or expected delivery for it — that way, people can be prepared for it.
Mostly you will use the goal for informative meetings and the delivery for productive meetings.
You are stealing other people’s time and stressing them out if you start or run late.
Have fun with more output across the whole team for the products and clients you are working for.
I am looking forward to your questions, additions and feedback. Thanks for spending your valuable time reading this. :-)
Kindly, Philipp
PS: Please share this with your team — they will appreciate the increased productivity at your upcoming meetings.PPS: You can follow me on twitter here, but you definitely should follow EN GARDE on Facebook.