Building ownership of outcomes and action plans
By far the biggest component of meeting inefficiency is lack of progress between meetings.
The resulting delays and repeated discussions drain energy, waste time, and create additional meetings. They undermine the very purpose of meeting in the first place.
Fortunately, remote meetings provide a far better platform for addressing this than their physical counterparts.
Ensuring clarity
A big part of helping to ensure progress is building ownership for the conclusions (covered in the preceding sections). However, clearly defining, documenting and allocating the actions is equally important. Furthermore, working with the participants to clarify actions helps to ensure their timely delivery.
Creating a visible structure for action planning
Using a simple table or planning chart in your meeting whiteboard will enable people to clarify exactly what is to be achieved by each action, and the appropriate timeline. This can be done collectively by using virtual sticky notes, and people can then volunteer for those actions best suited to them.
Simple tools for building ownership
However, many actions struggle to progress because people underestimate what is involved. Such as engaging the resources and support necessary to deliver them. The following tools can really help with this:
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The impact ease grid identifies actions with the best return for effort
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The solution effect fishbone examines all of the implications of a course of action
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The force-field analysis looks at how to adjust the motivation of those affected
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The pre-mortem identifies possible causes of failure in advance
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The Kipling list ensures there is total clarity and accountability
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Photocapture makes it easy to record the conclusions and build accountability
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And if delivery does not improve, it may be time for a difficult conversation or two
Building ownership at a deeper level
A good test of people’s confidence in the actions is to ask them whether they would bet $500 of their own money on it. This taps into a deeper level of insight. Would they bet on the successful timely delivery of the actions? Simply have a ‘Bet $500’ circle on the whiteboard and ask those who would bet to place their cursor there.
You can then ask the question ‘What would need to change for you to feel (more) confident to bet?’ And use the answers to refine the actions and ownership as appropriate.
Tracking progress
One of the biggest advantages of remote meeting whiteboards is their ongoing accessibility. This enables those with the actions to maintain updates. These can be added as sticky notes and embedded pictures against the original actions. The team can then use this to keep track of progress. And they can use it to chase up those who fail to keep things updated. This makes subsequent meetings even more efficient.