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Peter Henry

How do you measure the quality of your meetings?

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Most people complain that the meetings suck, but some meetings suck less than others. How do you go about measuring the quality of your meetings? Is it just a gut feeling or do you use any tools/metrics?

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Julia Shandrokha
A meeting is quality when it gives some results. A follow up report helps estimate.
Julia Shandrokha
@phenry20 It depends on the goals of the meeting. There have to be decisions made: for example, if the meeting is for planing a campaign, you have to come up with a plan and a roadmap in the end. If it's a review meeting, you need to come to some conclusions and have a list of what have been achieved and what has to be corrected or what to do next. If it's a creative meeting, you need ideas to be approved.
Peter Henry
@julia_shandrokha Ok so essentially there needs to be some goal and a way to validate that the goal has been reached? How do you determine if the goal has been reached? Is it based on consensus from meeting attendees?
Julia Shandrokha
@phenry20 Ideally, yes, the attendees or a moderator of the meeting should have a list of goals or a clearly worded agenda of the meeting beforehand. It's easier with lists because in the end you can simply check the points that have been discussed and solved.
Peter Henry
@julia_shandrokha Definitely agreed, agendas and meeting goals are important :). Last question, where do you put your meeting goals and agenda? Is it in the meeting description on your calendar or do you use a note taking tool?
Anna Mandziuk 🇺🇦
Making notes and lists definitely helps because important stuff can get lost during long discussions. At the end of the meeting or afterward, it's effective to have a rundown of the items discussed and made into an action plan. Then at the next meeting, you can begin by reiterating the points made in the previous discussion and what each team member has done. In my point of view, high-quality meetings bring results, and this strategy makes that happen, team members are not lost and know what to do next.
Peter Henry
@anna_mandziuk Thanks for the comment! When you make notes during meetings do you share them with others or are they personal notes? Also curious what you use for meeting notes
Anna Mandziuk 🇺🇦
@phenry20 When I make notes for myself, I usually just write them down in a notebook, edit them during the meeting, and can either clarify some points during the discussion or after the meeting with my boss. Then I create cards in Trello with all of the tasks that need to be done. My boss usually shared her notes in the department's group in Slack so that they could be further discussed in a thread and wouldn't be lost by tagging each member there. Of course, if your department's chat is constantly overflowing with posts, it may be a good idea to create a group just for meeting notes.
girish wadhwani
@phenry20 @anna_mandziuk Did you run into any problems with this process?
Anna Mandziuk 🇺🇦
@phenry20 @girish_w Not really at this point with my current team. However, I did run into issues with this system in my past workplaces, because the manager wasn't consistent in taking notes and sharing them. Which is why some points would get lost, and tasks wouldn't be done. Hence, it is important to be consistent with this process, otherwise it won't work.
Peter Henry
@anna_mandziuk That's super interesting. I like the idea of sharing them on Slack for further notes and creating action items on Trello to not lose track of action items :).
christopher moon
Without data or at least an action plan, any meeting is just a waste of time. We need at least one of them during a meeting.
Peter Henry
@christopher_moon1 Can you elaborate on what you mean by data? Where should this data live?
christopher moon
@phenry20 I mean operational data of your business. There is inefficiency in business operations and meetings. For instance, at weekly sales meeting, does a head of sales have in-depth breakdown or real data on why revenue is higher or lower than planned? If so, the meeting must be actionable. None likes a guess-work.
Peter Henry
@christopher_moon1 Ah I see. Thanks for elaborating :). With that being said, how do you go about evaluating the quality of meetings at your company? Do you analyze only the meetings you're apart of? Or do you just evaluate the overall operational efficiency of the business and view that as meetings are good?
christopher moon
@phenry20 Yes, I do evaluate efficiency. I do my best to keep all meetings short, unless talking new ideas or brainstorming. Probably less than 20min at max. All to-dos or action items go to a project management tool.
Arun Pariyar
A very simple measure for me is a good meeting ticks things off your list and give you a new set of things to do 📝
Peter Henry
@arunpariyar So essentially having an agenda before the meeting and having action items post meeting?
Paul VanZandt
I usually just think about the problems solved during the meeting. What were the questions we had going into it and what solutions did we leave with? This usually helps me gauge how effective the meeting was.
Peter Henry
@paul_vanzandt Do you usually know the problems you're trying to solve before the meeting starts? And how do you ensure everyone is aligned with the solutions?
Paul VanZandt
@phenry20 We generally have some action items for each meeting and some other stuff I want to address, so we go in with a solid agenda. As for alignment, we try to make sure that each problem has a solution or at least a date where it will get handled.
Peter Henry
@paul_vanzandt That's awesome :). I'm curious, what tool do you use to keep track of your action items?
Paul VanZandt
@phenry20 Usually it's tracked as tasks through our app Fresco or Asansa, but on my end I typically have a running note for each sprint we're in to keep track of everything.
Fernando Pessagno
By how long it takes for everyone to start falling asleep.
Maya Ben Zid
For me the key things are: 1) if the meeting couldn't have been an email, 2) if we managed to cover all items on the agenda, 3) if there are actionable takeaways and insight, 4) if we developed an action plan to start working on as soon as we wrapped the meeting.
Peter Henry
@maya_ovice Thanks for the comment! Quick question: How do you determine whether a meeting should be an email or not?
girish wadhwani
That would depend on the purpose of meeting. Some meetings are for collaborative decision making, some to learning/teaching, others are or persuading. For example, the quality for a sales meeting is very different than the quality for an engineering weekly sync up.
Peter Henry
@girish_w Let's take engineering weekly syncs for example. How do you determine the quality of that meeting?
girish wadhwani
@phenry20 There are two sets of criteria related to this 1, directly related to the desired outcome of the meetings 2, general meeting hygiene. Criteria related to 1 would be : Did we distribute the information that was required? Did we unearth problems hiding beneath the surface? Did we make the necessary decisions? Etc. Criteria related to 2 would be : Were we efficient with our time? Were the right people in the room? Emotional hygiene like were participants happy with the meeting? Did they feel heard? etc.
Peter Henry
@girish_w Sorry for the delayed response. I love the criteria you use to determine the quality of the meeting, however I'm curious about one thing. Are those questions purely self reflection? Or are those questions you ask the group?
girish wadhwani
@phenry20 These are more of a self assessment/monitoring. Also note that these are longitudinal i.e. assessed over a series of meetings.
Enola VEDOVOTTO
We use our own tool, Verticalls. It's an application that adapts to video conferencing tools like Teams and turns video conferences into KPI's. In addition, we can connect our CRM to our videoconference so we save time and data!
Peter Henry
@enola_vedovotto Cool product :). One thing I noticed however is that it's geared towards sales meetings. How do you go about measuring the quality of non-sales meetings?
Enola VEDOVOTTO
@phenry20 You are right! You can also use it for all types of meetings and so, measuring the quality!
Lucas Bonatto Miguel
The amount of learning or teaching
Peter Henry
@lucasbmiguel Interesting. So how do you go about measuring how much learning or teaching has occurred in the meeting?
Lucas Bonatto Miguel
@phenry20 well, both are a two-way channel. On my end I don't do any formal measurement, it's more based on how much new information I retained and the amount of interesting topics I was able to contribute to. On the other end I usually talk with people about how specific meetings went in different opportunities, like in a coffee place or a 1-1. I think that as long as the team involved in the meetings is not feeling it's being counter-productive it's all good.
Ujjawal Sharma
The less I speak, the more I enjoy :p
Kazimieras Melaika
Feedback afterwards the meeting. If it brought us some new ideas, insights, etc. and some results are seen - it's valuable. Also, a plan is always good. Btw, we’re launching in late May or the beginning of June. Check out our upcoming PH page: www.producthunt.com/upcoming/eff... Our project is called: Effecto. It’s an app for detailed habits, health, symptoms, and meds tracking. Pretty much for everything that is related to your physical or mental health and every daily factor that can affect you.