As cybersecurity professionals, meetings are at the core of our day-to-day work. However, without paying attention to the final outputs and metrics our efforts are to produce, we can easily become inefficient with a lot of overwhelm. Today we’re going to look at the role of meetings in our workplaces and how to make the most out of this necessary but not sufficient component of any organization today.

Whether they are face-to-face, Zoom calls, Microsoft teams, or Google meetings, meetings always waste time. (Whether value was acquired is what determines if another 30 valuable minutes of work time were not lost.)

Given that meetings take up a significant portion of the time spent at work (especially in the era of remote work), let’s examine ways to increase productivity while holding fewer and shorter meetings:

1. Have fewer meetings

Yes, this might sound strange but sometimes too many meetings can be counterproductive. One less meeting is one more hour of productivity ‘opportunity cost’ saved for your employees or team members. Their energies, efforts, and resources go elsewhere and like drops of water add to getting the bucket full.

The illusion that more meetings equal accountability have to be re-examined. 

A meeting is not a tool for accountability, it can be used for that, but it’s best fit for collaborative work, demos, timed brainstorming, decision-making (emergency or not), and education/training. 

Unfortunately, meetings are so prone to abuse, that one bad nut/stakeholder can turn a harmless 30min team huddle or budget review into an albatross of conflicting opinions, that most likely lead nowhere. 

A solution to this is to let the Facts (situated in the right context) do the talking. The one who has the undeniable facts or empirical evidence desired should be given the most prominent voice. When participants get used to that, you create a culture of rewarding well-researched and less emotional or parochial submissions during meetings.

 Productivity and accountability can rather be ensured using tools and techniques such as:  

• • Alarms & Timers
  • Remote work monitoring Software
  • Deliverables & Deadlines
  • KPIs & OKRs, whatever makes your organization’s productivity engine tick.

2. Have as few attendees as possible: Just like an ordinary debate among friends or family at a party, every extra person is an opinion, angle, and perception to be factored in. As it is commonly said, opinions are like noses. Everyone has their own. A way to tackle this is as the organizer of the meeting is to single out the most important Goal(tangible outcome) for the meeting and pick out SMEs(subject matter experts). If there are more stakeholders then consider grouping them into smaller(nested) meetings and designated their head(s) to represent their view and outputs of their mini-meeting at the bigger meeting. 

3. Adopt Mind Mapping Techniques: Here’s a quick tip from Jay Ripton on utilizing Mind Mapping effectively. 

“Mind mapping is an effective method to discuss an idea and explore new possibilities related to it. Business meetings can significantly benefit from a mind map maker. Managers can use mind-mapping tools for the following benefits  

• • Managers and leaders can create engaging presentations for the meeting. Audience engagement is crucial to getting a positive outcome from the meeting 
  • Regular PowerPoint meetings can take minutes and even hours to discuss the plan. Mind mapping allows you to cover long meetings in just minutes without missing any essential details and remaining on the meeting agenda 
  • Mind maps make task assigning seamless. Team members and leaders can know their responsibilities without complex explanations 

• • Meetings can discuss the agenda in order and logical structure with mind mapping” 

Meeting Dos & Don’ts 

Now that we’ve figured out how to set up meetings to achieve more let’s look at what to do or not do during them to add an additional layer of induced productivity while reducing vulnerability to wasted time. 

• Have warm-up intros especially if it’s a close-knit team and allow for off-topic social issues to be discussed. This allows for bonding, reduces the risk of animosity going into the meeting, and makes team members feel cared for. After all, people are the reason why your organization exists, and who best to cater to first than those in-house. 

• Minimize Distractions/Disturbance. Though camera’s being on is preferred for optimum engagement it may be useful for attendees with distracting backgrounds to go off-camera. It’s the same with audio, if you’re not talking or actively involved in a topic best be on mute. Also reducing technical hitches is a good goal. 
• End meetings when goals are met. Simple, not much explaining is needed. Hard stops are the best! 

In conclusion, we’ll pick a leaf from the books of physicists who’ve taught us that: 

• Efficiency = Output /Input.

Simply meaning if we want to get more value for our time and our organization’s money (i.e.. efficiency) then we need to focus on getting more output while not necessarily increasing the input denominator (time primarily). After all, the final denominator of World Records in any Sport is of course Time. 

Next week we’ll be sharing 3 Things to do to Advance your Cybersecurity Career in the next 3-6 months…, like our social media pages to stay updated on cutting-edge industry news.  

Credits: https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/make-meetings-more-meaningful-jay-ripton/