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
2 - In-meeting canvas
1 - 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.
