Implementing best practice with mycommittee
1. Changing meeting habits
There are many resources available with advice and tips on how to make your meetings more effective and efficient and everyone tried to implement some of those at one point in time. You got your team excited and everyone promised to make changes but after a while you notice that things slowly go back to the way they were. Until next year when you start all over again. Sounds familiar?
Most people don't like changes. But still, we are doing it (and have to do it) all the time. From experience we know that people start to change habits when there is an incentive. Something that attracts, rewards or even forces them to change. MyCommittee focuses on rewarding by having people spend less time on meetings and preparation while getting more work done than before. On the other hand there is also a slight push but only just enough to keep your team on the right path and prevent it from slipping back to the old days. You will hardly notice this because MyCommittee simplifies the meeting process, bringing it back to the very basics. Life is already complicated enough!
The next paragraphs briefly touch the most important meeting basics. These items, and how they are integrated in MyCommittee, are discussed in detail in the next chapters of this guide.
The Meeting Agenda
When you start using MyCommittee, the days you appear in a meeting without an agenda are finally over. Don't worry, this is not a threat. You will notice, even from the first time use, that when you schedule a new meeting your agenda is already half done. You will have to teach MyCommittee some of your meeting habits (more about this in chapter 2) and after that, for every new agenda you just have to enter the new business items and confirm the rest.
Again, there are many articles that discuss the role and importance of a good meeting agenda. Most of them are right, except for a few types of meetings like a brainstorming or JAD session, you need a good agenda for an effective meeting. When you use MyCommitte, you will be rewarded by creating the agenda! (more about in a second)
Distribute the agenda at least a few days before the meeting so members have a chance to review, make notes and/or add comments and be prepared when they enter the meeting room. Members can easily view the agenda by clicking on the link in the notification email. Notes and comments can be entered directly in the agenda. Encourage your members to review and comment the agenda so changes can already be made before the meeting even starts. Meeting time is expensive!
The meeting (taking notes)
The meeting is still the most important and difficult part of the process. Here is where things most often go wrong. Some meetings seem to turn into one long discussion about a variety of topics (many times half of them are even completely off topic) and after the meeting, when you are making the summary or meeting minutes, you find out that your notes are all over the place and you don't even know where to start.
There are many tips on organizing and improving meetings. You will find a good section of tips and advice here. Make sure to make yourself very familiar with these tips. All little things help!
When you pay attention to these basic rules, and this needs some practice, you will notice that your meetings can end on time and your summary is almost done when you leave the meeting room.
When you are familiar with MyCommittee you can even enter the minutes directly online during the meeting.
Creating Meeting Minutes
When you follow the guidelines above, creating the minutes should be a breeze! Do this as soon as possible after the meeting so everything is still fresh in your memory. Or even better, use a laptop with Internet access and enter the minutes online during the meeting. In any case, try to get the minutes distributed within a few days after the meeting. You will find more about the process of creating minutes in chapter 3.
Members can easily access the minutes by clicking the link in the notification email and can mark the minutes as 'read' directly on this page. Encourage your members to do this as soon as possible after they receive the notification. The comments option (comments can be attached to the meeting and each individual agenda item) allows members to notify the recorder about things that are missing or incorrect. All members can view these comments and reply to them. When properly used, the minutes can be finalized way before the next meeting!
Action Items and tasks
You will read more about how to create action items in chapter 3 but there are a few things you should know before. When you create an action item in the meeting minutes, MyCommittee will create a task for the member assigned to it. This task will show up on the 'Tasks' page. Each member can quickly see what is expected from them and by which date the task should be completed.
When the due date is getting closer, the task will also show up on the member's dashboard and overview page as a reminder.
MyCommittee will track these action items and they will appear in the old business section of the agenda automatically the first meeting on or after the due date (similar to deferred items)
When a member updates the task before the meeting, MyCommittee will also update the corresponding action item. Encourage your members to mark the task as completed as soon as the work is done and update the task description accordingly. This way your next agenda is already up to date!
Tasks created from action items can not be deleted and remain in the active tasks list as long as they are not marked as completed. You will never loose track of what was agreed upon during the meeting.
Note: When you start to implement best practices with MyCommittee, let your team know about it. Give them an introduction and some background. Give them also an opportunity to get familiar with MyCommittee and don't expect everything to go perfect from the first time. Make it fun!