Make Meetings More Manageable
Being part of a product or project team means understanding the importance of efficient meetings.
Whether in person, virtual, or a mix like us at Living Spec, meetings are essential for communicating, collaborating, and aligning goals, tasks, and feedback with key people inside and outside your organization.
Despite their importance, not all meetings are productive. In the US alone, there are 11 million daily meetings, with a third considered unproductive, costing \$37 billion annually. This is often due to a lack of a clear agenda, outcomes, or follow-up. Plus, with interruptions and distractions, hijacking huddles, and time dragging on, inefficient meetings can be frustrating and demotivating.
If you're ready to say goodbye to unproductive meetings, it's time to take action—no grand scheme required! Here are 3 practical ways to eliminate inefficient meetings with the help of Living Spec. These are general guidelines, and you should adapt them to your team's specific needs and preferences.
Start with an agreed upon Agenda Format
Ever left a meeting more confused and irritated than before? This can happen, especially without a clear meeting purpose or agenda. When shared ahead of the meeting, it helps to prepare attendees and let them know what to expect, keeping meetings focused and productive. Many guidelines advocate for a strict structured agenda, but it's essential to find a format that works for your team.
Living Spec simplifies the process of agenda creation and sharing, both within and outside the app, with features like sharing, export, and more. And save time by creating meeting snippets to help capture and store meeting planning information, such as topics to cover, people to invite, and meeting location. This ensures consistency and reduces the need to spend unnecessary brainpower on remembering details. You can also use Living Spec's Live Sync mode to keep everyone on the same page over zoom or other video conferencing tools.
Additionally, Living Spec also promotes efficient communication through video or audio file uploads, notes, and comments. If some or all the items on the agenda can be resolved without a meeting, easily cancel and save time for everyone.
Capture and Circulate Highlights with Living Spec
Key takeaways summarize the main points or outcomes of your team session. Recording and sharing them helps attendees remember the core ideas. With Living Spec, you can gather and share these takeaways without manual typing.
Here's how it works: Record your meeting and then upload it to your dedicated Living Spec page. Use AI speech-to-text to generate a transcript of your meeting, and edit and annotate the transcript as needed. Or better yet, move the content from the transcript to the relevant sections of your spec. This way, you can easily refer back to the meeting content and share it with others.
For an added level of detail and effort, you can cut or trim your recording outside Living Spec to extract meeting highlights, especially for teams or users who are not in the meeting but need to be informed. Afterwards, import the highlights into your document. Additionally, you can enhance your spec by adding images, videos, links, and other media to make it more interactive and informative.
Finally, share your post-meeting resources and spec with the required people. Invite users, manage collaborators, and set permissions to control who can view, edit, or comment on your spec. Make sure the right teammates have notifications enabled within Living Spec to stay updated on the latest changes and comments.
Take Control of Post-Meeting Action Items
Imagine having many important tasks from different meetings to remember. With Living Spec, you can easily manage your to-do list without leaving your spec. Easily create, assign, and track tasks directly from your meeting highlights. In fact, in the same spec containing your meeting notes, recordings, and other important information, you can type action items and convert them into tasks.
Plus, with a recent Living Spec update, you can now allocate tasks, change their status, classify them, and much more, all from the task's feature chip. No need to spend time before meetings to refresh yourself on the tasks' status. Before sessions, you can quickly see what’s done, what’s pending, and what’s overdue just by glancing at your tasks. Managing your tasks with Living Spec is simple and efficient, making it easy to track progress and status.
Maximize Your Meeting Experience with Living Spec
Try the three tips outlined on Living Spec and optimize your meetings:
- Register for a Living Spec account and create a new document for your product.
- Assemble your meeting agenda by cross-referencing product features to be discussed.
- Share your spec with your team in advance, and ask for their feedback.
- Record your meeting if possible, then upload it to your Living Spec document.
- Use the speech-to-text feature to generate a transcript and extract key takeaways and action items.
- Reorganize the transcript into your spec.
If you like what we offer, we encourage you to subscribe to our SpecCer or SpecTacular plans. Say goodbye to unproductive meetings and embrace a more collaborative and organized future with Living Spec.