Need to Hold an Urgent Meeting? Here’s How to Make It Effective

Having to hold an urgent meeting is often chaotic, since time is short and urgency is often necessitated without prior warning. This is why we are here to help you with some great tips on how to make your urgent meetings effective, so as to save time and ensure your business can maintain its high standard of performance.

 

A Few Minutes of Preparation can Save a Lot of Wasted Time

When urgency mode hits, it’s often difficult to maintain control and plan ahead, since time is already short, and you need to ensure action as soon as possible. However, planning can actually save you time in urgent situations, and one such way is to set an agenda for the urgent video conference and send it to all of the attendees a few minutes before connecting. This helps ensure that, when the meeting starts, everyone is on the same page, is prepared to add value to what will be discussed, and ultimately reduce the overall time needed. Additionally, as shared by All About Agile, this will eliminate the need to re-explain things to those who haven’t been keeping up to date, allowing everyone to get straight into discussions without wasting any valuable time.

Acquiring quality broadcasting and conferencing software from a reputable brand like BlueJeans Network is also imperative for your video all hands meetings, as even small problems like faulty sound quality can waste an excessive amount of combined time. Remember, each second that you waste is essentially multiplied by the number of attendees, so invest in equipment and software that will ensure your time-sensitive projects are never compromised by trivial problems.

 

Learn from Each Meeting to make the Next One Better

A mistake that many business owners and entrepreneurs make is to assume that everyone needs to attend, focus and get involved. This, however, is possibly a mistake, since not everybody will be eager or willing to get involved and add value. As such, when hosting a video conference, try to consider which members actually bring value to discussions and which ones struggle to participate. This way, you will be more capable of deciding who actually needs to be there, and can possibly even take actions to help some people get more involved. If you can see that someone often begins to talk, but is then interrupted by others who talk louder and more abrasively, speak with that individual after the meeting and find out what they need. Perhaps they simply need some encouragement to overcome the shyness, or perhaps you need to offer them more opportunities to talk. Regardless of the issue, however, you may find that there are numerous ways in which you can evoke more participation, action and effectiveness from each session.

 

Never Underestimate the Value of Debriefing and Delegating Actions

While many people put high priority on how to plan for and begin an important discussion effectively, ensuring that your employees understand what was discussed and know what to do to follow up is critical. There are many times when people will eagerly get involved in discussions, only to leave thinking “What am I supposed to do about what was just discussed?”

So, as Business Balls shared in a recent article, rather than simply ending with a casual goodbye or an inspirational thought, ensure that each meeting leaves a lasting impression by reviewing what was discussed, debriefing the attendees and essentially delegating actions to each one. This way, you can be sure that your employees are taking action – even if they weren’t concentrating or focusing on what was being discussed.

 

Consider Recording Each Session and Sending a Copy to Attendees

One of the most fantastic benefits of video conferencing software is that you don’t necessarily have to invite every single person, since you will be able to record each session and send it to everyone else. As such, you can simply invite the most important people who will be able to add genuine value to the discussions, and then allow the rest to catch up when they have free time. This not only saves you the hassle of having to get everyone connected – and paying attention – but also accommodates for individuals who may be very busy with the urgent work. These individuals won’t have to necessarily stop what they are doing. Additionally, recordings allow everyone to re-watch important parts, so that they don’t have to take notes during the meeting, and can instead simply focus on the urgent project at hand.

As a final note, remember to stay calm and collected when urgency strikes, as you need to maintain control if you want everything to happen quickly and smoothly. So consider these great tips next time you are facing off against the clock, and never forget the value of taking those extra moments to plan, debrief and connect with individuals if necessary.