There are three phases of achieving the benefits from the visibility you now have over your meetings, each containing four steps.
- The first phase is about establishing a good framework of basic meeting data. This involves loading the calendar add-in, sharpening up the accuracy of the data through simple calendar disciplines, and then making basic changes to the balance and quality of your meeting invitations
- The second phase uses automatic, micro-poll based, end-of-meeting feedback to develop a better visibility of meeting effectiveness. This will help you to see opportunities to improve the efficiency of your meetings, and it will enable you to track the impact of those improvements. It is in this phase that we are likely to have the biggest impact on meeting time
- The third phase is about working toward a situation of sustained meeting excellence, both in hosting and attending meetings. It uses a deeper analysis of feedback to highlight where adopting best practice can provide clear practical benefits, and enables us all to develop a mastery over our own part in meetings
Each of the three phases represents progress toward full meeting effectiveness, but each reflects a manageable ambition in its own right, and provides practical benefits of its own. These are described in the table below.
| Phase | Steps | Data Reqts. | Benefits | Management Focus |
| 1: Awareness – Visibility of activity | 1.1: Observe 1.2: Reconsider 1.3: Clarify 1.4: Review |
Requires only the meeting stats (it does not require any automated meeting feedback) | Reduction of meeting and travel time through better awareness of the ‘costs’, shifting some physical meetings to virtual, shifting some internal meetings to social networks, and greater clarity over what is to be achieved and how | Are people on the system, is their data correct, are they including objectives & agendas, are there any patterns or anomalies which highlight opportunities? |
| 2: Insight – Visibility of effectiveness | 2.1: Capture 2.2: Analyse 2.3: Improve 2.4: Benefit |
Requires at least some level of automated meeting feedback, either end-of-meeting or in-meeting | Further reduction in meeting time through making meetings more effective in terms of basic and obvious improvements, and diligence borne out of data | Are people requesting and reviewing feedback data, are the scores improving, are there benefits in travel and meeting time? Are managers following up? |
| 3: Inspiration – Visibility of enlightenment | 3.1: Question 3.2: Experiment 3.3: Engage 3.4: Establish |
Requires in-meeting feedback with the qualities & participation tabs available, and access to the meeting clinic resources | Sustained reduction of meeting time through enhanced effectiveness by adoption of best practices and deployment of responsibility for good meeting behaviours | Can we see real improvement trends, is there much clinic activity/adoption, is participation improving? Are there coaching programmes taking place, and is review systematically established? |