This Is How You Successfully Reduce the Number of Your Meetings

1. Why do you have too many meetings?
2. How to make your meetings more effective
3. How to reduce the number of your meetings
4. Fewer meetings with Collato
5. The right OKR tool for every company
6. Save time and increase productivity

What does a typical workday look like for you? Can you work on your tasks in peace or do meetings just keep coming one after another?

Meetings are supposed to promote your cooperation and exchange, to facilitate your work. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case in practice. A multitude of appointments tie up time and thus reduce your productivity. Therefore, it may make sense to reduce your meetings and only hold those that are really important for your team and your company.

Why do you have too many meetings?

Especially within projects, there is often a high need for coordination between the various departments of your company in order to achieve the desired result. The more tasks you have, the more likely it is that the number of meetings in your calendar increases proportionally. Often meetings are also scheduled for short discussions, which could be clarified by phone or in a one-to-one conversation. Following the motto: Quantity over quality. If your meetings lack a clear purpose and objectives, your colleagues see them as a waste of time, which in turn affects their participation during the meeting.

How to make your meetings more effective

But what characterizes a good and effective meeting? Effective meetings have a clear goal, which all participants know in advance. If you have achieved this goal, or at least have worked out a satisfactory result for all participants, you can end the meeting. Accordingly, agree on the agenda of the meeting in advance with all participants, to have a clear roadmap.

To achieve this, you should already formulate the invitation to the meeting in concrete terms. The subject should inform all participants about the goal to be achieved in this meeting, such as "Marketing quarterly figures meeting" instead of "Marketing meeting".

You should set the time span for your meetings as short as possible, to focus on the core issue. The more time you plan in advance, the more carelessly you will probably handle it. With short meetings, your colleagues also need to prepare in order to make their contribution within the scheduled time.

Invite to your meetings only those people who can really attend the meeting and make a contribution. This leads to no one being able to withdraw and switch off when extroverted people from the same area keep taking the floor.

Also make sure that you only discuss the topic in your meeting for which you have invited your colleagues. It may be tempting to use the get-together to discuss other tasks. However, this is not sensible, as you would lose your focus and you would start the topic unprepared, which in turn costs you valuable time. You also save this by eliminating distractions in the form of mobile phones and chats. Focus entirely on the problem and the creation of a solution - your messages will wait for you afterwards.

The first prerequisite for adhering to your meeting time is a punctual start. If your colleagues are still in the bathroom or having a coffee chat, they can join quietly and without disturbing afterwards. Of course, this should not become a habit, as adhering to appointments is an appreciation for your colleagues, but this can happen in exceptional cases.

Record the results in a meeting protocol and also write down the specific tasks for all people involved. This way, you make sure that everyone understands the same thing. Furthermore, it is sensible to periodically review the necessity of your meetings. Specifically, recurring appointments are often taken for granted, although they are frequently not required at the rate at which they occur. For effective meetings, the principle is: As many as necessary, as few as possible.

How to reduce the number of your meetings

If you want to reduce the number of your meetings to have more time for your tasks, we have compiled the best tips for you:

1. Block times in your calendar

Reserve fixed times in your calendar for your most important to-dos - ideally as a recurring appointment. During this time, you don't accept any meeting invitations, but instead dedicate yourself to your tasks. After all, it doesn't help anyone if you stuff your calendar and your to-dos are not completed. Alternatively, you can also introduce a meeting-free day if you prefer.

2. Use other ways for exchange

Not every agreement necessarily needs to be in the form of a personal meeting. Use the company chat, emails, your project management tool or phone calls to obtain and pass on information from your colleagues.

3. Decline unnecessary meetings

Harsh, but true - you don't have to be at every meeting. If you have other priorities at this time, you can also politely decline an appointment.

4. Short daily coordination

In daily 10-minute stand-up meetings in the morning, you can update your team and then start the day full of vigor. This way, all team members can work in a targeted manner, as they are aware of current changes and outstanding to-dos. In these short coordination rounds, you can also get feedback on your thoughts, which you can take into account directly.

5. Use OKRs

You already know that you should set clear goals for your meetings, for them to be successful. If you use Objectives and Key Results for your goal setting, you involve the overarching company goals in your daily work. This allows you to better assess which tasks have priority and which ones can wait a bit. OKRs are characterized by clear deadlines and objective goal measurements as well as individual responsibility taken by you and your colleagues. Each of you can pursue your own work and yet keep an eye on the bigger picture. This significantly increases productivity and motivation within your department.

Fewer meetings with Collato

To effectively integrate OKRs into your daily business, you should use an OKR software, like for example Collato. The tool facilitates the planning and implementation of your strategies and consolidates all relevant information for all members of your team in one central location.

As everyone knows what contribution they are making towards achieving the company's goals, transparency increases and motivation for productive cross-departmental cooperation, whereby everyone is always up to date, increases. This software enables you to prioritize your tasks and goals.

With Collato, you can use different functions to reduce your meetings. For those who cannot attend a meeting, record your screen and sound track and save them under the appropriate project. With interactive and intuitively operable formats, you promote your colleagues' thirst for knowledge and encourage them to try new things and think outside the box.

Share important information with your colleagues with a short status update.

Source: Collato

Your colleagues can respond to your shared news and interact with them.

You can also record goal hierarchies and represent dependencies between goals, which you can also track. Through the clear assignment and deadline of a task, you keep the current status of your tasks and projects in view at all times and can thus react quickly to changes.

Source: Collato

A roadmap of your goals shows you at a glance how their achievement is progressing.

The OKR software Collato, can be used through three different packages. The free basic tool offers you 2 workspaces and 5 GB of storage space, while the professional version offers unlimited workspaces, version histories, recoveries, and 500 GB of storage space for 10 euros per user per month. The enterprise version can be completely customized to your company, including custom branding, single sign-on (SSO), and bulk exports.

The right OKR tool for every company

On OMR Reviews we have compiled more OKR tools with their features and user reviews for you

• Perdoo

• Leapsome

• Mooncamp

• Workpath

• Loopline

• Weekdone

• Zielnavigator

• 15Five

• Mirro.io

• Ally.io

• Quantive

• Betterworks

• KeepSolid Goals

You are sure to find the right software for you and your company that supports you in reducing your meetings.

Save time and increase productivity

Clear goal setting using OKRs significantly contributes to you being able to conduct your meetings more effectively and reduce their number. With an OKR tool like Collato, you also promote the exchange between those involved in the various goals and ensure that all team members understand their own and the company's goals. This allows you to gain time to invest your work power in the important things and achieve the best possible results for your company.