Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
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Attendance, Not Minutes
The first in an ongoing series of suggestions to make your project meetings more effective.
Many project managers spend time compiling detailed minutes for teamwide distribution after each meeting in order to make sure everyone is in the loop. However, this approach can be inefficient and even detrimental to project success. If team members start to rely on the minutes and skip meetings, issues that could have been resolved quickly through discussion will wait to be resolved off line, costing more time in the long run.
To make attendance more feasible, weekly functional team meetings should run no longer than the time it takes for each team to briefly go over project status. Even if some teams do not have issues or risks to discuss, it is important that they are represented at these meetings because topics shared by other team members may affect them. Well-attended meetings also stimulate critical discussions that can mitigate risks that would have otherwise surfaced later as issues. This minimizes the need for multiple off-line discussions to reach consensus on a subject.
After the meeting, the project manager can send out a memo summarizing major decisions. Detailed minutes can be eliminated to make attendance necessary to obtain critical information. With all of these practices combined, meeting attendance and productivity is likely to increase.
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