Staring at the clock, tapping your pen and resisting the urge to text message; is this how you spend your business meetings? We've already discussed how to make meetings more productive, but what if you just want to skip them altogether? With 21st century technology the necessity to meet in person is largely a thing of the past. These creative solutions allow business meetings to take place conveniently in your virtual office space:
- Conference Call- Whether you're in a full time office, at a coffee shop, or on your couch at home, you still have access to a phone! Consider forgoing an in-person business meeting and having a conference call instead. This medium gives you the freedom to have an open discussion with as many people as needed without the wasted energy of trying to book a physical meeting space, possible travel, etc. You can even use a service like Powwownow to do the dialing for you.
- Video Conference- Video conferencing allows participants at your meeting to give visual presentations without being in the same physical room. While there are many great tools out there to help facilitate video conferencing (like skype), you can let your local business center set up a video conference on your behalf for a more professional tone!
- Email- Most meetings do not result in immediate decisions or expeditious action. Email is therefore an optimal way to have an ongoing discussion about an issue or upcoming project if continued debate is what you desire without mismanaging time. Email allows everyone to contribute to a discussion on their own schedule, giving them the opportunity to think and research ideas before putting them on the table.
- Social Network- If your company in particular uses an internal social network, consider using this method to have business meetings. Social Networks allow you to post presentations, documents, photos and videos in real-time. If your company doesn't have a social presence, you can use a common social network like linkedin or google+ for professional discussions. Just remember to follow social network etiquette rules.
Long, arduous meetings are unproductive and an unsuccessful meeting just plain wastes everyone's time. So accomplish your goals and unleash your team's creativity during meetings by thinking outside the box and skipping the meeting room!
