How to Make Technical Meetings Productive

Technical transcription has always had huge demand from corporate entities. In day-to-day running, businesses deal with many kinds of communication involving highly technical information, which would need to be transcribed for improving business performance. One of these communications is meetings.

Corporate Meetings are Necessary

If there is one thing companies count on for lubricating the myriad systems and processes within them, it is meetings. Corporate meetings can help in stock taking, re-assigning responsibilities, redefining roles and getting the point across to multiple departments in the organization. Technical issues relating to product or service development are mostly discussed through interactive meetings rich in multimedia capabilities.

Unplanned Meetings Can Waste Time

Meetings can also waste time, if they aren’t held professionally. That depends on how you and the other participants prepare for the meeting, and how they behave in the meeting. Meetings have been often perceived as a gigantic wastage of time. And that’s often because the organizers fall short in the planning and execution stages. A survey by Salary.com a few years back revealed that professionals in the US believed meetings to be the prime destroyer of productivity.

However, experts such as Professor Albert Mehrabian have always believed that meetings can provide amazing results which written or telephonic communication cannot, since the written word can only convey 7% of the intended "meaning and feeling." Verbal communication can only convey 38% while the remaining 55% is reportedly conveyed through non-verbal signals and facial expression.

Keys to Successful Meetings

So meetings can make a positive difference. First of all make sure that the meeting is absolutely necessary and would actually contribute to dealing with the issue. Then, follow these logical steps – the 5 Ps of a successful meeting:

Punctuality

This is important for you, the head of the meeting and the others, the participants. Not only does failure in this unnecessarily delay proceedings, but it gives the indication that time really isn’t valued in your company. If you cannot ensure a meeting takes place on time, how can you make the whole organization run efficiently and cut short on wastage? It de-motivates sincere participants.

Preparation

Getting the homework done well before the meeting takes place is critical. It really is a no-brainer that failure to prepare can compromise the efficiency of the meeting and unnecessarily lengthen it, wasting time and resources again. If you don’t prepare well, it gives the participants – your employees – the wrong signal, that you just haven’t taken the meeting seriously. It would trickle down to them and they could be coming unprepared for subsequent meetings.

Prioritization

Giving participants who have concerns the opportunity to express themselves first is important. You can address those issues which could have a bearing on the efficiency of your organization. Prioritizing the happenings at the meeting based on who has serious concerns is the professional way. You’re holding the meeting to address issues, and people having issues must be given the opportunity to present them so that a solution can be found or worked on. You should ensure that neither you nor any participant dominates the meeting and discourages others from expressing themselves.

Purpose

A meeting should always have a clear, well defined reason. And you should ensure that the concern is dealt with first in the meeting, before going to other matters. The meeting could be sharing some technical information, carrying out performance appraisal, or making decisions – whatever the goal is, it should be reached. So keep an agenda in place to reach the most important aspects, and never wind up without having dealt with them satisfactorily, even if more time is being consumed.

Presence of everyone

It is nearly useless to conduct a meeting without the required participants. Make sure that announcements and other information regarding the meeting are properly conveyed to the concerned people. You must also employ measures against people failing to attend so that attendance is never compromised at future meetings.

After all these are taken care of, it is important you ensure efficient technical transcription of all the details. This can keep the entire goings on in the meeting on record. Without this the meeting wouldn’t serve its purpose.

Promoter for MOS Legal Transcription Service.