Meetings

Hold effective and efficient meetings using NovaMind

You may think that a meeting is just a meeting and there is nothing that can be done to make it more effective, but if you are anything like me, you have wasted many hours in meetings where decisions we not made quickly or effectively, or there were breakdowns in communication.

There are seven key steps to holding great meetings:

1. Be clear about the meeting's objective
2. Create a solid agenda
3. Prepare in advance
4. Manage the input from the participants
5. Use the time effectively
6. Plan, discuss, and assign roles
7. Communicate effectively both before and after the meeting

When you keep these things in mind, your meetings will be effective and get the solutions that are required.

When planning your meeting, create a Mind Map in NovaMind where the central purpose is the center of the Mind Map, and radiating from that are the main points to be discussed.

This becomes the agenda and is emailed to all the participants, and they can open it in their copy of NovaMind, adding their specific points ready for the meeting, and bring along their pre-prepared input for the meeting.

Meeting Agenda

With the agenda clearly in front of the participants on a projector, you can all see where you fit in to the overall plan, and why the different tasks are necessary, and how they fit together. If anything has been forgotten in the overall plan, it becomes obvious when viewed in the pictorial representation of a Mind Map.

Each of the agenda items is extended with new branches as the different aspects are discussed during the meeting. Where there are tasks which are part way through implementation, the percentage complete can be indicated on the branches. Where roles need to be assigned to different people, NovaMind helps with the resources feature.

Following the meeting, the completed Mind Map is distributed as meeting minutes. Because the Mind Map was created during the meeting with everyone's input, there is no room for disputes about what was discussed or assigned, and everyone can remind themselves in an instant what their roles and responsibilities are and why they are necessary. When people have a clear vision of why they are important to the task, they perform much more effectively.