When meetings go nowhere...

Andreas Bee, Managing Director at BIBUS AG, shares:
"The collaboration between motivated colleagues and our creative freedom is a great daily stimulus. What annoys me are discussions that don't reach a conclusion, negative critiques without counter-proposals, and poorly prepared meetings."

At BIBUS, our strong culture of innovation drives us to propose new solutions, to try things out, and to prototype. But, like many companies, we are also confronted with sometimes endless meetings that bring more frustration than concrete results.

So how do you make your meetings more productive and focused?

We adopted a few simple principles.

First of all, we realized that a meeting can be effective (producing an action plan in record time) without being productive (if no action is taken). Our first resolution was therefore to concretize, because it's the concretization phase that gives the meeting its added value by transforming it into an operational reality.

Secondly, we've found that the more productive meetings are, the more self-disciplined participants become. They are more punctual and less scattered on their smartphones because their time is optimized.

Another principle is to check that the objective is really achievable. It's better to define an achievable partial objective than an ambitious vision that's totally unattainable!

And you, what are your methods for making your meetings more efficient and productive?