5 Ways to Make Meetings More Effective

As remote-based work grows in popularity, so do the demands of Zoom calls, Google Hangouts, Slack Huddles, etc. While these meeting formats are a great way to connect with the team and get on the same page, they may not always be as productive as intended.

For example, have you ever stepped away from a meeting thinking that it wasn't the best use of your time? Or, have you had a meeting on a Friday afternoon and attempt to self-recap it the following Monday? Or, have you ever been a part of a meeting where the desired outcomes weren't accomplished ... without another meeting?

We certainly have! So, to make meetings most effective, we've devised a strategy that is simple, effective, easy to implement, and we hope you can find it useful too.

1. Meeting Minutes a.k.a. The Vehicle

We're Salesforce professionals. We love to build stuff. Below, you will find the keys to the dessert cabinet - our go-to meeting minutes template.

[Meeting Title]

Meeting Reason/Purpose/Highlights:

[Add Reason/Purpose/Highlights here]

Agenda:

• Agenda Item 1

• Agenda Item 2

• Agenda Item 3

• Agenda Item 4

Meeting Notes:

• Agenda Item 1

• Notes on Agenda Item 1

• Agenda Item 2

• Notes on Agenda Item 2

• Agenda Item 3

• Notes on Agenda Item 3

• Agenda Item 4

• Notes on Agenda Item 4

Implementing This Template

Meeting Title

We find that two categories or buckets for our meetings works well for us. Those categories include:

• One-off meetings

• For a title, we like to use [Date - snippet from the meeting reason/purpose].

• Recurring meetings

• For a title, we like to use [Date]

• As many of us have multiple meetings throughout the day, we use a folder structure that helps with organizing our meetings by date.

2. Organizing Meeting Minutes

We hold, on average, 15 meetings per week - sometimes more, sometimes less. These meetings are typically recurring internal meetings, recurring meetings with clients/key stakeholders, or an ad-hoc meeting with a client. Therefore, how and where we house our meeting notes is incredibly important. The below structure allows us to maintain a consistent reference point over time, build team redundancy, and, of course, it makes meeting minute creation very easy (shoutout copy/paste).

Recurring Meetings

Sample Folder Structure: Sprint Meetings

Parent Folder: Client's Business Name

Sub-Folder: Meeting Minutes

Sub-Folder: Sprint Calls

Sub-Folder: [Year] - Sprint Calls that occur in this year will have meeting minutes in this folder

The above visual outlines this folder structure in Google Drive; however, this folder structure can still apply to you if you have an alternative note-taking platform like Notion, ClickUp, Confluence, etc.

Something to note is that we tried to go a layer deeper by adding a sub-folder for month, but we found that it created a lot of unnecessary effort to keep our folders current.

3. Meeting Reason/Purpose/Highlights

Below, you will find our go-to samples for this section.

1. Recurring Meetings:

2. Summit One is meeting with [client's business name] to discuss

3. [List of last week's action items]

4. [List of any blockers or open questions that came up during the week]

5. This week's action items

6. any changes in priorities

7. One-Off Meetings

8. Summit One is meeting with [person's name/department's name] to discuss [what prompted the meeting] in hopes to accomplish [goals for the meeting].

4. Simple Agenda Strategy:

Spend 5-10 minutes before the meeting begins to write an agenda. Pass this agenda along to your meeting attendees by posting in your medium (email, slack, etc.) of choice.

5. Simple Action Items Strategy:

First, make sure you're jotting down your action items during the meeting. Second, and equally as important as writing them down, is to follow up on those action items. When the meeting adjourns, we will typically review and cleanse our action items, download them from our system of record, and pass them along to meeting attendees.

However, maybe you wrote down meeting notes that were a bit more personal or your meeting minutes are filled with some chicken scratch. If that is the case, you may not want to send meeting attendees your entire meeting minutes document. Below, you will find a simple and effective follow-up template you can use:

Hi All,

Thank you very much for your time today. Please see below for the full list of action items from today's call (in order of priority).

• Action Item #1 [Assignees Name]

• Action Item #2 [Assignees Name]

• Action Item #3 [Assignees Name]

Please let us know if there is anything missing from this list or anything you would like to re-prioritize. We hope you all have a great rest of your day.

Best,

[Name]

To recap, we covered 5 simple ways to make meetings more effective. These strategies included:

1. Implementing meeting minutes

2. Organizing your meeting minutes

3. Highlighting a meeting purpose, reason, and/or highlights

4. Implementing an agenda strategy

5. Implementing action items and following up on those action items

If you have a strategy of your own that works well for you or you're interested in collaborating some more on this topic then let's get in touch!

We hope you find these strategies helpful, and, most importantly, that you have some well-organized, well-documented, and down-right fantastic meetings in the near future.