One of the many aspects of corporate and workplace culture that everyone experiences are meetings. Whilst meetings enhance collaboration, aid in decision making and help to generate ideas, they can be the cause of so, oh so, many hours of wastage of time. Many a time meetings need hours of preparing, and much time in delivering actions that come out from the endeavour, sometimes only an email would have sufficed. I’ll spare you the stats on the sheer volume of time wastage. However, sometimes meetings are very necessary, and I always have felt that people need to be trained to run them effectively. Recently, I came across an absolute gem of a Twitter thread by Jasper Polak (@polak_jasper), and he very succinctly shares some pointers on how to run meetings better from his experience. I liked his guidance so much, I thought I’d not only favourite, but blog about it to refer to at some point in the future, but also share with others who resonate with the same plight.

Towards the end of the thread, Jasper points to a checklist he has created on the web, which is a nice run through, however, I found that his Twitter thread to be more informative and valuable. Below are the salient points in summary…

• Prepare materials beforehand
• Have clear expectations and share them
• Stick to one meeting purpose
• Groom participants beforehand, don’t surprise them.
• Run the meetings like a pro with and agenda
• Agree on outcomes and actions.
• Summarise, close, then follow up with an email.