Graham Allcott’s co-author for the new book “How To Fix Meetings”, Hayley Watts, is this week's Beyond Busy episode guest.
Hayley is a mum, a coach, and she also has a background as a leader in the charity sector, where she gained a lot of experience with meetings - both good and bad.
Graham and Hayley start off by talking about how Hayley got into the whole productivity business which led her to join Think Productive as a Productivity Ninja, and how she helps people change their work habits for the better.
'If somebody said to me "You need to do some work on how you organise yourself and your productivity" I might have said something quite rude to them about that.'
They then go on to chat about meetings: what's broken about meetings and how that affects people and businesses.
'I speak to so many of our clients who will say: "Oh, yeah, I've just got back to back meetings. I've got too many meetings. I can't get the work done because I'm in meetings all day." And then you look at people's calendars and they are in meetings all day - they're back to back! And, particularly people who are more senior in organisations will say: "Well, I spend all day in meetings, and I have to work in the evenings and at the weekends to get the work done". That's not sustainable. As we all know the Zoom meetings have taken over this past year.'
Hayley and Graham talk about the benefits of online meetings but also the disadvantages. That then leads them on discussing different ways to fix the broken meetings and they share some great tips on how to make meetings take up less of your time and become more productive for everyone.
'Very often, I think meetings don't need long pages of notes with who said what and other kinds of detail of the conversations. Sometimes they just need the action points. It will depend on the meeting. You know, if it's a board-level meeting, you probably want more detail than that. But, if it's a team meeting or project meeting, maybe the actions points are enough and somebody doesn't need to spend their effort and attention on typing up exactly who said what because you've captured the actions - all the things that matter.'
Graham Allcott is the founder of the time-management training company Think Productive.
This podcast is hosted on Podiant.
The full conversation is available on the Beyond Busy YouTube channel.
✔ Links:
Buy the book How To Fix Meetings:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fixing-Meetings-Productivity-Ninja-Guide/dp/1785784757
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Buy “How to be a Productivity Ninja”:
http://amazon.co.uk/dp/1785784617
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http://www.thinkproductive.com
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