Have you ever had the very first question to pop into your mind right after the meeting: “Was this meeting even productive?”
Or maybe… “Did we honestly need everyone to be in this meeting? Did we achieve our meeting’s objective? Perhaps an hour-long discussion could be easily done via one email? …what the heck was this?”
So, how exactly to know whether your meeting was productive or not?
Here are some powerful KPI’s (Key Performance Indicator), to track while planning your agenda, running the meeting, and analyzing it afterward.
Structure of the Meeting Agenda
Powerful meeting agenda is a baseline for every effective meeting – worldwide reports show that 67% agrees upon this fact and 72% says that defined objective makes meetings even more productive.
Track these KPI:
- Planned agenda items (including title and short description)
- Duration of each one of them
- Responsible participant for each agenda item
Recurring Meetings
1:1 with your boss, status updates, team building meetings – there are a lot of recurring meetings in your calendar, right?
Just be careful with planning – at some point meeting once in two weeks can be more productive and focused than weekly meetings.
Track these KPI:
- Frequency of meetings
- Decisions made in one meeting
- Allocated vs. spent time on meeting
- Postponed agenda items
- Discussed agenda items
- Agenda items repeated from the previous meeting
Single Meetings
If you’ve only had one opportunity to get things done with one meeting – you must be extra focused to stay on track and make sure that all things you were planning to discuss get your attention.
Track these KPI:
- Decisions made in one meeting
- Allocated vs. spent time on meeting
- Postponed agenda items
- Discussed agenda items
Presence
Reports have shown that professionals spend 2 hours per week in pointless meetings. And that costs a lot! So, perhaps, your next meeting would be much more productive with fewer people in it for faster decision making, and for others – more valuable time to spend on personal productivity.
Track these KPI:
- Number of invited attendees
- Number of actual attendees
- Responsible ones for agenda’s items/ tasks
- Irregular attendees
Engagement
The key to meeting productivity is the right people around the table.
If Mr X isn’t assigned to any agenda or action item or doesn’t get involved in a conversation, maybe you should check the meeting’s participant list once again.
Track these KPI:
- Mr X’s participating in decision making
- Assigned agenda items to Mr X
- Assigned action items to Mr X
- Mr X’s evaluation of the contribution
Time Planning
In most online calendars default time for a meeting is between 30 min and 1 hour. This option makes it easy to schedule a meeting, but sometimes one hour is unnecessary. Time planning starts with creating meeting agenda – set the time limit for decision making or topic discussion.
We all know that time deadlines are the best productivity boosters, right?
Track these KPI:
- Fixed actual start time
- Fixed actual end time
- Allocated vs. spent time on each agenda item
Wasted Time
Wasted time is the biggest threat to productivity. Whether it’s a deviation from the planned agenda, waiting for all attendees to arrive, connecting to the online sheet, or poor organizational skills – all of this affects your working day. Wasted time and irritation.
Track these KPI:
- Allocated vs. spent time on each agenda item
- Number of off-topic conversations
- Time spent on off-topic conversations
Meeting Action Items
Action items are one of the most powerful tools to measure the meeting’s productivity. To make them more valuable, add deadline and responsible person if it’s a task, or the date if the decision has made.
Track these KPI:
- Agenda items defined before meeting
- Defined tasks
- Decisions made
- Agenda items canceled/ postponed
Summarize
It’s easy to get lost in notes and assigned tasks if all your working calendar consists of remote meetings and conference calls.
Summary and follow-up emails are essential whether it’s a meeting with clients, project teams or any other group. Always share meeting minutes, made decisions, files with others and export your tasks to the planner as soon as the meeting ends.
Track these KPI:
- Defined tasks
- Decisions made
- Agenda items canceled/ postponed
- Involved persons
- The time between the end of the meeting and summary email’s delivery
Participant’s Satisfaction
Lots of reports show that we all find it annoying when someone is taking phone calls or texting during meetings, when participants interrupt each other, don’t listen to the contributions of a spokesperson, arrive late or leave early, deviate from planned topics…
So how to measure attendee’s satisfaction?
- Feedback from attendees
It’s always a good idea to ask others what they think about what just happened. By getting a constructed review, you’ll see on what you should be focusing more, and for others – they will learn what they didn’t like and what to avoid in their next meeting (in the best scenario, of course! :))
Use these tips, take meeting’s planning seriously, track meeting KPI, and you will improve your planning skills, save yours and the team’s valuable time and boost every meeting’s productivity!
By the way, all these meeting KPI you can easily track if using Meetinch for your meeting management. Try it for free and enjoy the difference!
