Effective meetings: How your project team can save hours every week

A look at your calendar reveals that every day is filled with meetings of various kinds. Many of these meetings lack an agenda, making targeted preparation almost impossible. Rather than attending meetings unprepared — often without knowing whether your presence is necessary — you could use that time far more productively on your project work.

However, by taking a few simple steps, you can structure meetings to make them both productive and time-efficient. The following explains how you can make future meetings more effective and run them more professionally.

A good meeting doesn’t just start at the scheduled time; it starts with proper preparation well in advance. The key is to have a clear agenda based on specific questions or tasks, rather than just bullet points. If, during the planning stage, you realise that there is no real need for discussion, it is better to cancel the meeting before sending out the invitation. It can also be helpful to link the agenda to a work management tool. This allows topics to be directly connected with tasks and project plans, and participants can add comments or suggestions in advance.

Equally important is selecting participants deliberately. It is often better to invite fewer people who can genuinely contribute. However, if a key person is unavailable, the meeting should be postponed to avoid producing incomplete results. Ideally, the agenda and relevant documents should be circulated at least one working day before the meeting to allow everyone to prepare adequately for the discussion. It is also advisable to include time blocks in the agenda. Estimating how much time each topic should take in advance ensures a focused discussion, prevents delays, and helps to maintain participants’ attention.

For a meeting to be productive, clear facilitation is essential. One person should be responsible for guiding the meeting, structuring discussions, preventing monologues, encouraging quieter participants to contribute and ensuring that more talkative individuals do not dominate the conversation. Time limits, often referred to as 'timeboxing', can help prevent discussions from becoming endless. The parking lot method enables important but off-topic issues to be noted down and addressed at a more suitable time.

To maintain concentration, potential distractions should be minimised. Laptops or phones should be switched off unless needed. In online meetings, the 'Do Not Disturb' function can help. Tools such as whiteboards, digital aids and creative techniques make outcomes more visible and tangible.

It is also crucial to keep to time: meetings should start and finish punctually. A clear structure encourages participants to work more efficiently. In longer meetings, short breaks, for example, after 45 minutes, help to maintain attention. It is particularly effective when tasks are assigned to individuals during the meeting, along with their respective deadlines and tools. The minute-taker can record the results so that the other team members can focus on the meeting.

A meeting doesn’t end just because the room has been vacated or the call has ended. Consistent follow-up is essential. Rather than long minutes, a concise action list or status summary is sufficient. This document should record the outcomes of the meeting, as well as clear responsibilities, deadlines and any outstanding issues, including items from the 'parking lot'. All participants should receive this summary promptly after the meeting to ensure clarity about next steps.

Not every topic warrants a meeting. Shorter or asynchronous alternatives are often sufficient. Daily stand-ups, for example, last just 15 minutes and provide a quick update on completed, current and upcoming tasks. Asynchronous updates in team chat tools are even more efficient, as they enable information sharing without requiring simultaneous attendance. Many routine updates are better delivered in writing than taking up calendar space.

It can also be beneficial to establish 'meeting-free days'. On these days, team members can focus on their work without interruption. Anyone who realises they cannot contribute meaningfully to a meeting should feel confident about declining it, or about sharing relevant information in a more suitable format, rather than attending an unnecessary discussion.

Meetings can be powerful tools, but they should never be an end in themselves. For this to happen, they must be clearly planned, efficiently facilitated and consistently followed up. This saves teams valuable working time every week and boosts motivation and productivity.