Meeting Data Collection

Ask most of your employees how much they accomplish during meetings and chances are they'll report very little. That's because meetings, especially in today's technological age, are generally a waste of time. Rarely does a company manage to effectively cover something that could easily have been shared in a brief email, and often most of the hour or so meeting is wasted in casual conversation or an over-emphasis on information that needn't be that complicated.

But meetings are an important part of running an organization. They're an opportunity for powerful collaboration. They open up the forum for discussion and they have the potential to drastically improve understanding of the topic at hand.

Meetings are important, but the current iteration of meetings in most industries is woefully lacking.

There are likely dozens of reasons why current meetings are inadequate when it comes to sharing, disseminating, and brainstorming information. But a few of the most obvious include: Speaking Up – Few people want to speak up in meetings when they have a great idea for fear of being judged or explaining it correctly. Anyone in your company may have a brilliant idea, but if they don't share it the idea dies.

Misunderstanding the Message – It's also possible for you to hold a meeting that seems like a success, but in reality fails to deliver the message successfully. It's even possible that your employees don't realize that they misunderstood the message. Disorganization – Meetings can be inherently disorganized.

No matter how much you've planned there can often be tangents, or information is forgotten, or other employees were unable to share their thoughts or topics. This is in addition to the less information based components of a meeting, like being unable to hear a speaker, or leaving a meeting without a clear answer and having no way of following up without another meeting. Meetings have some obvious problems, and the above list represents only a few of them.

But we know that meetings are important. They're more personal and interactive than email. They offer more opportunities to team build and they're an easier method of communication for many people that struggle to put their thoughts into words when discussing things online or on the phone.

So there must be a way to improve upon modern day meetings to make them more educational and offer a better solution for your business. The answer is in meeting surveys, which we'll introduce in the next article.