“Are we here for a good time or a long time?” In one form or another, that’s what every person who walks into your meetings is asking internally, especially volunteers. Really the question has nothing to do with the actual length of the meeting, but with an expectation of quality.
Aside from the average creative boards, agendas, and delegation lists, what are ways that you can improve the quality of your meetings?
Memorable Progress = Fresh Creativity
So often looking back at meetings there’s a feeling that we made progress, but in an average way. Eventually this leads to a stale culture of average ideas. Average Progress = Average Creativity.
Memorable progress is one way to change the status quo. This year we’ve incorporated memorable discussion with a “track pant” themed meeting, new meeting locations, drawing on lego, sharing stories of real life change, and playing what I call “great idea but what if…?”. We’re trying to make progress in a memorable way because that keeps us fresh. Memorable Progress = Fresh Creativity.
Social Media = Progress
My old style of leading a meeting meant shutting down technology. At the end of these meetings everyone left with a giant “to-do-list” with instructions to report back. Now, if there’s a meeting where we’re really hammering something out, I want all channels of communication open and available. This has really allowed us to go further faster in our meetings. With all the social media tools available, everyone we need to talk to for a short portion of the meeting is right at our fingertips. This means much less reporting back on conversations and more live decisions at the table.
Working “on it” more than “in it” = Inspiration
When a team gets into a place where we spend more time working “in” the details of ministry versus working “on” the vision of the ministry in our meetings, I know our system is broken. Long-term, people are inspired by working “on it” and people will dread my meetings if we don’t get there. Where is our system leaking needless details into our meetings? Are we organized far enough in advance? Are we delegating well?
What about you? Do people know that they’re in for a good time, not a long time when they walk into your meetings? What have you been doing to improve the quality of your meetings?
