We all love to hate meetings. We think we’d save a lot of our working time if it weren’t for meetings. While that certainly is true in many cases, some meetings are necessary to get your team up-to-date on a project, to share company’s news and vision, or to make sure everyone has the same information.
We’ve talked many times on how to keep a meeting brief and how to be aware of the villains of meetings—all to help you organize better, brief, successful meetings.
But what happens after the meeting is finished? How do you keep track of what’s been agreed on and how do you continue the momentum you’ve build in the meeting?
Today I’ll share two steps you can take to make sure everything discussed in a meeting gets done.
Two Things to Do After Meetings
Accountability
Steve Jobs was famous for keeping meetings as small as possible and every participant was responsible for a task once the meeting ended.
The psychology behind this is very simple: By making people accountable in front of the rest of the team, he made sure they treated the task with care, making it their baby, if you will.
When people are held accountable, they tend to put more focus on their jobs and they feel invested to do more. As well, you make sure important things aren’t left incomplete.
Besides assigning people to-dos, add a timeframe for those tasks. State when you expect an answer or a status report with the progress made. Unless you add a timeframe to their to-dos, these will get buried in the day-to-day rush.
Follow Up
Nothing pays better results than follow up. Whether it’s about a meeting or an entire project, this helps you stay updated with the status of each task and project. It has a side effect as well: It sends a clear message to your team that you care and are interested.
How many times have you left a meeting without being clear about what was next? Too many, probably.
Next time you organize a meeting, add a follow-up and timeline to your own calendar so you can stay abreast of the work. This will keep everyone organized and on schedule.
What actions do you take after a meeting?
Want to know more about being brief? Check out The Brief Practitioner, an online course from The Brief Lab that teaches executives how to avoid information overload and become lean, effective leaders and communicators.
