Banish monotony from your office meetings and revitalise them by stepping right out of the box! Here are a few trendy techniques to fire up your imagination.
© credit: Akson
Standing meetings for keeping it short and to the point
Did you know that staying standing during a meeting actually increases productivity? This is excellent for small project meetings, as standing meetings help people stick to the agenda: nobody wants to remain on their feet for an hour. Standing meetings also spur the participants on to be much more dynamic and to collaborate more fruitfully.
Walking meetings for boosting creativity
Walking meetings are the logical next step up from standing meetings. Nilofer Merchant, consultant and former innovation counsellor at Apple, suggests that for small team meetings people should go out together for a short walk. She says that this initiative disrupts the routine of classical office meetings and encourages people to be far more creative…. and they also get the health benefits of this extra exercise!
Silent meetings for imposing discipline
We all know those meetings where everybody keeps interrupting and where going off-topic is the rule, not the exception. Here’s a radical suggestion to avoid them: run silent meetings – even teleworking meetings – where all participants have to type their contributions into a chat app window. The golden rule is only to type in remarks that are totally pertinent to the issue under discussion.
A terrific bonus here is using the copy/paste option as an easy way to produce instant meeting reports!
Bike meetings – weird but unforgettable
Although more difficult to organise on an ad hoc basis, bike meetings can be held on a bicycle built with up to 7 seats. The only way the bike will move forward is if every cyclist does some pedalling. These highly unconventional meetings reinforce team spirit and stimulate creativity.
Going outside the office building
A final possibility, also extremely effective, is to organise your meetings in a business centre completely away from your office. And why not couple this with one of the trendy meeting techniques described above?
Make your own opinion!
Whether conventional or out-of-the-box, why not bring your meetings over to Factory Forty?