Bad meetings waste time, create unnecessary work and countless lost hours of productivity. Bolster your position as an efficient meeting organiser with the aid of a little help from your desktop or smartphone…
1. Worklife
Best for collaboration
Free for irregular use (there’s a fee if you want to use on an on-going basis), this is a useful tool for the team leader looking to introduce a more collaborative approach to meetings. An assigned meeting organiser can create meetings that sync with Google calendar, along with agendas and subsequent minutes whose points can each be attached to specific attendants. They in turn can chip in with thoughts, ideas and information, as well as see at a glance if they have action points without having to wade through lengthy notes. The result is more accountability and a central way to track outcomes.
2. Genee
Best for eliminating scheduling headaches
Free while it’s still in Beta mode, Genee works like the executive assistant you wish you had, finding mutually convenient times in the diaries of those you’re trying to arrange meetings with, thereby avoiding the pain of multiple back and forth emails as you try to secure a slot. Simply copy Genee into your initial email or text and the app takes over from there and schedules your meeting for you.
3. Team Meeting Timer
Best for keeping meetings on track
Meetings that run over time because participants can’t stay on agenda; sessions that last the full hour just because that’s how long the organiser put in the diary: if these common meeting bugbears plague your working life, this simple app is worth a download. Encourage brevity in your participants by assigning chunks of time to your entire meeting or each individual agenda point and set to work against the ticking clock. You’ll also get tips for keeping meetings efficient, as well as templates for creating succinct agendas and minutes.
4. Mindmeister
Best for idea generation
Create beautiful mind maps in collaboration with your colleagues with this brainstorming app. Simply access a cloud-based blank canvas and document all the ideas shared by your attendees, who can collaborate in person or remotely. This app is a great ice-breaker for teams new to group idea-generation, and the ‘change history’ feature tracks how your final mind map was made, creating a handy way to show the thinking processes at play.
5. Evernote
Best for managing your 1-2-1s
More than just a note-taking app, Evernote is a great way for team managers to keep neat records of multiple 1-2-1 direct report sessions. Use the ‘stack’ function to keep a digital notebook for each member of staff, inside which you can create unlimited categories of notebooks per employee (objectives, to-do lists, priorities and so on), while the tagging functionality makes it easy to search for notebooks created on certain dates or featuring project code words.
The successful meetings series on the everywomanNetwork
Successful meetings: it’s all in the preparation (part 1)
Successful meetings: taking the chair (part 2)
Successful meetings: dealing with challenging participants (part 3)
Successful meetings: making yourself more visible (part 4)
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