Better Meetings by Design

Fewer, shorter, better quality meetings, enabled by the world's first meeting design framework.

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Quantifying the Need for Change

90% of all workplace tasks and outputs involve meetings at some point in the work flow.

Source: Global Meetings Survey

80%

of all meetings are generated by 20% of the workforce

16

working years is what team leaders will average in meetings

50%

of total meeting time could be eradicated with no impact

91%

of meeting leaders never calculate the cost of their meetings

72%

of people rarely reject a meeting regardless of the detail provided

88%

of people are regularly in back-to-back meetings

87%

of companies don't have a meetings budget or strategy

65%

of meetings don't specify a purpose or expected outcomes

44%

of meetings have no post-meeting actions or follow-up at all

Meetings Impact Everything

Meeting culture and organzational culture go hand-in-hand.

Stop

Most organizations have no meeting strategy, nor a meeting budget, and have not invested in developing the meeting productivity skills of their people.

Collaborate

Most people have never been asked about their meeting experiences or preferences, yet meetings influence almost everything we do at work.

Listen

It’s time to take meetings seriously, recognize the impact that they have, and commit to generating better business outcomes with fewer meetings.

The World's First Meeting Design Framework

Based on the world's largest ever study of meeting experiences and preferences.

Click images to reveal more
3 meeting design phases
1
Pre-meeting design
2
In-meeting design
3
Post-meeting design
6 meeting design steps
1
Plan
2
Prepare
3
Participate
4
Prioritize
5
Pursue
6
Persist
3 meeting design canvases
1
Pre-meeting canvas
2
In-meeting canvas
3
Post-meeting canvas
9 meeting design blocks
Types
Formats
Roles
Tech
Personas
Skills
Comms
Essentials
Models

115 cards to guide you on your journey...

Meeting cards
A physical and digital learning experience to enable change.

The Better Meetings Ambassadors' Program

Better Meetings Cards
A physical and/or digital pack of the Better Meetings by Design cards to guide the design process.
Digital Learning Experience
Purpose built digital content providing the approach, tools, and techniques for meeting design.
Global Meetings Data
Insights to inform your meeting strategies from our Better Meetings Research & Global Meetings Survey.
Better Meetings Community
Better Meetings Communities to accelerate change through the sharing of ideas and experiences.

Meeting Design

Fewer and shorter meetings of much better quality.
  • Prove, or disprove, that a meeting is the correct course of action.
  • Use the Meeting Design Framework to guide your meeting design process.
  • Determine your current state of meeting maturity and plan your target state improvements.
14 Meeting Design cards
Meeting Design cards

Meeting Types

Translate Meeting Labels into the activities to determine the Meeting Type(s).
  • Explore the 6 individual Meeting Types.
  • Know when and how to bring various Meeting Types together.
  • Align Meeting Types (activities) to your meeting's purpose, objective(s), and outcome(s).
7 Meeting Types cards
Meeting Types cards

Meeting Formats

Appreciate the pros and cons of each Meeting Format.
  • Acknowledge which meeting Formats best support specific Meeting Types.
  • Understand the most common problems associated with certain Meeting Types.
  • Apply guidelines and ground rules relevant to your Meeting Type.
9 Meeting Formats cards
Meeting Formats cards

Meeting Roles

Know the individual, and collective, role requirements for your meetings.
  • Align specific roles to Meeting Types and Meeting Formats.
  • Define tasks and responsibilities for specific roles.
  • Manage costs by avoiding role duplication.
7 Meeting Roles cards
Meeting Roles cards

Meeting Tech

Identify your available meeting productivity tools and the tasks they support.
  • Consider how the available tech supports your most common Meeting Types and Formats.
  • Select the relevant tech and integrate it into your meeting design process.
  • Know how to prepare your participants to use the tech.
7 Meeting Tech cards
Meeting Tech cards

Meeting Personas

Understand the characteristics of the 6 Meeting Leader Personas and when to adopt them.
  • Identify relevant personas for the Meeting Type and its objectives.
  • Consider the use of primary and secondary personas.
  • Use your chosen personas as part of the meeting design process.
7 Meeting Personas cards
Meeting Personas cards

Meeting Skills

Explore a range of proven facilitation tools and techniques.
  • Align specific techniques to various Meeting Types.
  • Understand the role of the facilitator.
  • Apply techniques for post meeting action management.
9 Meeting Skills cards
Meeting Skills cards

Meeting Comms

Prevent miscommunication and misunderstanding negatively impacting your meeting.
  • Understand the process of communication and communication barriers.
  • Know your own, and others', comms styles.
  • Investigate active listening as a superpower and know how to use it in meetings.
11 Meeting Comms cards
Meeting Comms cards

Meeting Essentials

Create accessible, inclusive, and conducive meetings for groups of diverse participants.
  • Know when and how to take control.
  • Demonstrate humility and encourage active participation
  • Understand different conflict handling modes.
13 Meeting Essentials cards
Meeting Essentials cards

Meeting Models

Consider your own Meeting Leader Maturity.
  • Know your personal brand and professional presence.
  • Appreciate the impact of trust on group performance.
  • Understand group dynamics and how to manage dominant participants.
8 Meeting Models cards
Meeting Models cards

Eradicate unnecessary meetings

At least 25% of your meetings could be removed from your diary, without there being a negative impact.
Significantly reduce the number of meetings you schedule by proving whether, or not, a meeting is the correct course of action by using the Meeting Decision Tree.

Get more done in less time

Good pre-meeting design will streamline the in-meeting experience. Reconsider how much time you allocate for your meetings.
Well designed meetings allow you to do more, in less time. Reduce 60 minute meetings to 50 minutes, and 30 minute meetings to 20 minutes. Apply the 20:50 Rule.

Design enables better meeting outcomes

Great meetings don’t happen by chance, they happen by design.
Well-designed meetings remove uncertainty, simplify complexity, and eliminate ambiguity for everyone. People know why they’re invited, what they need to do to prepare, the contribution they will make, and what the purpose, objectives, and outcomes are.

Start Your Journey Today...

Better Meetings Ambassadors' Program - Ultimate Bundle

  • Physical & Digital Better Meetings Cards
  • Digital Learning Experience
  • Global Meetings Data
  • Better Meetings Community
Select: £49

Digital Only Bundle

  • Digital Better Meetings Cards
  • Digital Learning Experience
Select: £39
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Better Meetings by Design ® is a registered trade mark of Better Meetings by Design LTD.

Meeting Design

Design as a discipline is applied to a wide range of professional activities, but rarely to meetings. Poor design, or no design, wastes time and money, and demoralizes staff.

Meeting design is the purposeful act of creating the end-to-end meeting experience. Learn to work with the end in mind. If you don’t know what the required outcomes are, you won’t be able to articulate the purpose or the objectives.

3 - Post-meeting canvas

Post-meeting canvas

2 - In-meeting canvas

In-meeting canvas

1 - Pre-meeting canvas

Pre-meeting canvas

5 & 6 - Post-meeting steps

Step 5: Pursue
  • How will you maintain momentum?
  • What will you need to do to keep participants engaged?
  • How will you ensure all tasks are completed on time, and are aligned to the objective/s and outcome/s?
  • How will you help create bandwidth and manage time?
Step 6: Persist
  • How do you manage and resolve conflict?
  • How do you respect workloads?
  • How do you encourage, lead, and support the team when the going gets tough?
  • How do you avoid the need for another meeting?

3 & 4 - In-meeting steps

Step 3: Participate
  • How will you manage and motivate the group?
  • What will you do to keep on track, and on time?
  • What are the right tools and techniques?
  • How will you engage and empower everyone?
  • How will you capture and coordinate any actions?
Step 4: Prioritize
  • How will you prioritize tasks, assessing impact and effort?
  • Who is responsible for each task?
  • How do they manage input from others?
  • What information will need providing to the broader team?
  • How will updates be shared?

1 & 2 - Pre-meeting steps

Step 1: Plan
  • What type of meeting are you having?​
  • Can you communicate the purpose and outcome?​
  • Who needs to be invited, and how many people?​
  • Can you estimate the cost of your meeting?​
  • What do they need to know, and do?​
  • What meeting format will you use?​
  • What meeting rules will you apply?
Step 2: Prepare
  • How will you ensure everyone is prepared to contribute?
  • What technologies will you use?
  • How will you facilitate the group?
  • How will you create an inclusive environment?
  • How will you manage action items, and tasks?

Post-meeting design

Design your strategy to maintain momentum. Pursue task and action completion, and persist to achieve their deliverables by helping the group manage conflicting workloads, and competing priorities. Use a responsibility assignment matrix and a goal-setting framework to increase motivation and, subsequently, performance.

In-meeting design

Design the meeting experience to encourage everyone to participate actively. Facilitate the group to achieve the meeting’s objectives, efficiently and effectively. Prioritize what needs to be done, when it needs to be completed, and who is responsible, to pave the way for successful outcome delivery.

Pre-meeting design

Get the basics right. Capture all your pre-meeting planning and preparation in a structured format. Ensure the required participants are well informed, understand the reason for meeting (the purpose) and come fully prepared to contribute confidently, and to deliver value, in an inclusive environment.

Meeting Models

A meeting should bring people together to collaborate to get work done. Teams that operate in a trust- based environment outperform those with low trust. Meeting leaders need to lead with authenticity, be able to deal with difficult situations, and empower the group to achieve the meeting’s objectives.

From your own personal brand and professional presence to team trust, culture, and group dynamics. These insights will help you move beyond the basics of meeting design.

Meeting Essentials

No two meetings are the same, even when the type and format are common. People are a huge variable in the meeting mix, so it’s important that leaders and facilitators can create a meeting environment that is accessible, inclusive, and conducive for large or small groups of diverse participants.

Leverage a selection of proven tips, techniques, and recommended best practices to help guide you on your better meetings journey.

Meeting Comms

It’s easy to take communication for granted because it’s something we do in every circumstance of our personal and professional lives.

Understand the process of communication and recognize your own, and others’, communication styles and preferences to help avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Meeting Skills

Facilitation is so much more than just running a meeting. Support from an unbiased facilitator, expert in using proven tools and techniques, ensures progress is made, objectives are achieved, and roadblocks are removed.

An accomplished facilitator orchestrates the activities that are required to help the group understand and solve problems, ideate, make decisions, and manage action items.

Meeting Personas

There are six meeting leader personas that describe the role characteristics, or attributes, that a meeting leader might need to assume during the pre-meeting, in-meeting, and post-meeting phases.

Understand the personas that you need to adopt as Meeting Leader, to elicit the contribution you need from your participants, aligned with the meeting purpose and objectives.

Meeting Technologies

Technology and meetings go hand-in-hand. The majority of organizations have a preferred meeting platform, but don’t specify what specialist meeting productivity applications can be used.

Determine what meeting technologies are necessary, in addition to those that will enhance the meeting experience and improve the chance of realizing the expected outcomes.

Meeting Roles

There are six main meeting roles. An individual may have a single role for the entire meeting, or they may need to adopt various roles, for specific purposes, during the course of the meeting. The leader must ensure everyone understands their role requirements so that they are able to contribute real value.

Define who you need to invite, and understand the specific role that your participants must play, ensuring that they arrive prepared and able to contribute meaningful value.

Meeting Formats

What’s the right blend of synchronous and asynchronous communication to get things done efficiently and effectively? What are the considerations for your in-person, remote, or hybrid meetings?

Recognize the importance of the meeting experience for participants, irrespective of the format (in-person, remote, or hybrid), to guarantee that it is accessible and inclusive for all.

Meeting Types

Is the meeting for problem solving, information sharing, ideation, decision making, status updates, or team building? Or most likely, a combination of several ‘meeting types’ all in one meeting.

Identify the specific meeting type you are leading, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of that meeting. Determine how to get the best outcomes from every meeting.