A lot of time gets wasted in meetings because people arrive poorly prepared to play their part in making the meeting efficient.
People often arrive for meetings without having completed the necessary preparation, pre-reading or actions from previous meetings. As a result, it is common for meetings to repeat the pre-reading to ensure everybody is up to date, to schedule presentations and updates on progress that could more efficiently be read (if you could rely on people to read them), and to spend time discussing actions that have not happened.
In fact almost 70% of meeting inefficiency arises because of the behaviours of the participants, particularly in respect of their preparation beforehand.
One simple tool to address this in remote meetings is the Readiness Check-in – a simple Venn diagram of overlapping circles which enables people to quickly indicate their readiness for the meeting. From this it is easy to see (and track) meeting preparation, to drive improvement, and to make data-based decisions on what needs to be included in the meeting.
To use the Readiness Check-in, simply right click the image above, copy it, and paste it into your meeting whiteboard. Then invite people to move their cursor over the circles to the cover all of the circles they have completed (but not the ones they haven’t).
Ideally you are looking to have all cursors in the central section – the intersection of all three triangles. But if it isn’t it does give you the opportunity to follow-up with any defaulters and talk through with them how they plan to be better prepared for the next meeting.
In reality, a lot of laxity in preparation arises because there is no visibility and follow-up. The Readiness Check-in helps fix this, and sets better expectations of what is required.