Misconception of reporting

Approximately three-minute reading time.

Purpose

This article aids in optimizing meetings to be more productive, thereby resulting in heightened progress.

Introduction

Meetings generally revolve around a series of reports to which we contact and consult the members of our team regarding.

Via this process, we address the highlights by first contacting the project manager, consulting the team, and then deciding the next course of action.

The ideal meeting should yield a clear pathway for each member to act on behalf of.

Personal story

Meetings are not always necessary as sharing documents can achieve a similar, if not better, result.  Additionally, it is also a method I have found to be a rather effective means of data reporting.

In my scenario, I have a company that is remotely based, which serves to be advantageous, provided that it allows me to direct my organization from abroad. As a result, meetings have a role in ensuring each project's success. However, in certain instances, only sharing documents can make it difficult to track our progress; therefore, that method of communication has its pros and cons.

The structure of a meeting

Most meetings should be limited to around 30 minutes (which means that they can be recorded into a single document).
In those 30 minutes, we utilize the first 5 to share the information we have gathered, and if an off-topic prompt arises, we hold another meeting to address it in order to avoid missing the primary focus of each meeting.

Meetings are a symbol of preexisting progress and pave the way for an organization's future, however, when the significance of a meeting gets lost in the process, it can easily turn into an unfruitful expenditure of your time.

Our philosophy is to always face the future and account for it via our meetings.

How we are missing the main points

A common mistake when engaging in a meeting is by occupying the bulk of the meeting to report data.  The purpose of data reporting is merely to provide insight, as the focus of the meeting should be to analyze the data and formulate a follow-up strategy rather than simply reiterating the data points.  

Avoiding misunderstandings, sharing information, and arriving at a consensus are nevertheless valuable tactics. However, it should not be the focus of the meeting.

From my standpoint, reporting and arriving at a data consensus serves as the backbone, whereas creating an approach to address the topic of the meeting lends towards what is intended to be accomplished from the gathering.

We aim to use 80% of the meeting time to discuss our plans for the future, with the initial 20% designated to data sharing at the very beginning.

The benefit of using shared documents to record data is such that we can alleviate most of the potential for misreported data.

Conclusion

Successful meetings serve as one of the main contributors toward progress.  With a relatively simple layout, common meeting structures are not particularly difficult to implement; however as a result, that very simplicity could evoke an array of misunderstandings.  A general or unspecific policy, for instance, could be interpreted from multiple angles.  

Ultimately, the primary goal of a meeting is to negotiate toward a consensus as we collectively strive toward the future.

Applying the most efficient tactics in data reporting and communication to arrive at a consensus will certainly facilitate the process of formulating an ultimate conclusion.

Thank you for reading.

Coming soon

• How to be productive

• The difference between understanding and recognizing

• How to handle challenging environments

Supporter

Jiaxin Wu