Even though we are a startup with an informal garage culture, we do have some meetings :) As we grow as a company, meetings tend to drag in ever more people and thus consume ever more time, while making it harder to effectively exchange ideas or reach decisions. It's extremely important to keep the meetings efficient.

Regular meetings

Calendar invite

Each meeting needs to be in Google Calendar. Here are the rules for creating calendar invites:

• What is the meeting purpose (sync, discussion, decision, ...) → set the concrete agenda
• What is the meeting goal → define concrete outcome to be reached
• Materials or information to be studied by everyone before the meeting
• What should everyone have prepared for the meeting
• Who is responsible for the discussed project/call (if anyone else than the meeting owner)
• Always include a link to Google Meet (or Zoom) in the meeting and enable guests to edit meetings - see ‣

At the end of the call, the holder should ask if we reached the goal. If not, why, and what are the next steps?

During the meeting

Small talk

Make enough time for small talk at the beginning and the end of the meeting, it's super super important, especially when talking via video. As an organizer of the meeting you should encourage that, e.g. by asking a person how their weekend was :)

The organizer should always enable people to join before the host, so they can chat!!!

Turn on your camera to make the video more personal

Covid forced most meetings to videoconferencing, which is less personal. People working from home for a long time might be lacking social contact. So, whenever possible, please turn your camera on to make the calls more personal, and don't be afraid to spend a few minutes at the start of the meeting with chitchat.

Agenda

For a meeting to be efficient, it needs to have an agenda, so that people know if they need to join or not. Specify if the meeting is just a status update, brainstorming, or a decision needs to be made. A good way to write an agenda is by using a list of questions that need to be answered at the meeting.