Some Innovative Meeting Formats for Improving Productivity

1. Some Innovative Meeting Formats for Improving Productivity Meetings can be recorded and transcribed with the help of an audio transcription service. New formats can make meetings more productive. MOS Legal Transcription Company 8596 E. 101st Street, Suite H Tulsa, OK 74133 www.legaltranscriptionservice.com 918-221-7810

2. This is the world of virtual offices, online companies and remote work teams. Meetings are indispensable in such a setup, and these need to be recorded accurately and transcribed for future reference. Typically, businesses may employ a transcription service provider such as a legal transcription company to take care of the transcription requirements. Conducting a meeting is not an easy task; lack of proper planning can result in meetings with poor outcomes and which involve a huge waste of time and money. Often, employees find meetings to be boring and unproductive due to reasons like meetings don’t start on time, no clear objective or purpose, late arrival of participants, long-drawn out meetings, no interesting information or facts and so on. For meetings to be productive, encourage all participants to communicate with each other. This helps to gather insights from different people, which helps in efficient decision making. Innovative and creative meetings are more productive than regular meetings. It encourages participants to think out of the box and share ideas. fastcompany.com recently highlighted some examples of creative meeting formats that can make meetings more effective. Joel Califa’s GoalFest: Joel Califa was hired as a cloud computing manager at o DigitalOcean. To make meetings more interesting he introduced a new system where he would gather his team of seven designers and they would use a Google spreadsheet wherein they would set and share their self-directed goals for the following week. They would also score themselves on a scale of one to five on how well they completed their earlier goals. This system allows everyone one to set their goals publicly and hold themselves accountable, which ensured that the meeting belonged to the participants rather than the meeting manager. To this innovative system Califa added a “lessons learned” segment to share what they have learnt so far, identify patterns that worked and those that did not work, this meetings system was adopted by Facebook and Buzzfeed teams. For this type of meeting to be effective, everyone should participate. Wins Meetings: A study in the year 2011 analyzed 26 different project teams and o found that celebrating small wins can have a positive impact on team motivation. So many organizations now celebrate small wins to motivate their employees. The entire team in an organization can gather together on a convenient weekday and appreciate each other for recent wins. Wins Meetings is a popular meeting format because at the end of the meeting, everyone feels good about themselves and their teams. MasterMinds: This meeting format is ideal for organizations with a distributed o workforce and employees working remotely all over the world. Buffer, the social media management platform has developed MasterMinds, a meeting format that www.legaltranscriptionservice.com 918-221-7810

3. pairs up two team members for regular coaching and support. The common structure of this format is a one-hour session divided into two parts. 20 minutes to share and celebrate one’s achievements (10 minutes per o participant) 40 minutes to discuss one’s current top challenges (20 minutes each) o Other ideas to make meetings productive ✓Personalized presentations: This technique is useful silent meetings where meeting attendees are given headphones so that they can be in the same meeting room and listen to individual meetings. ✓Outdoor experiences: Meetings that incorporate physical activities and casual outings help in team building. It also provides new learning experiences that help attendees to think from a broader aspect. ✓Fishbowl conversations: In this session there four member- three guest panellists and one individual from the audience. As the discussion goes on, the participants keep entering and leaving the fish bowl panel. Finally, the moderator summarizes the points discussed. ✓Events that are project based: You can have the group create something tangible by the end of the meeting. Each session should be designed so that the participants can move through the creation process gradually with new approaches and unique activities introduced as they move along. Instructional and active sessions can be intermixed and attendees can put their learning into actual practice. The above mentioned meeting formats make meetings valuable and informative for the entire team. For any meeting, the experience and knowledge of the employees serve as an important resource for gaining valuable ideas and inspirations. Meetings can also be recorded and transcribed with the help of an audio transcription service so that an accurate record of the proceedings can be maintained. www.legaltranscriptionservice.com 918-221-7810