Jason Shah, Founder of Do.com On Making Meetings More Productive

How much time exercise you lot waste in meetings considering the people running them aren't prepared? There's no agenda. Colleagues arrive late. What's discussed has anything to do with you or your work. An hour later, y'all've done nothing, learned naught, and contributed zip. What was the bespeak?

Do.com aims to assistance people have better meetings by giving them the resources for planning and executing them. In a lot of means, it's like a checklist of things to practice before, during, and subsequently a coming together to make certain it'southward productive for everyone involved.

Earlier I met Jason Shah, founder and CEO of Exercise.com, we emailed to discover a suitable date and fourth dimension to talk. Once nosotros agreed, he replied, "I programme to call you lot on Skype, and I'll ship over a calendar invite shortly." A moment later, sure enough, a calendar invite arrived.

The solar day of our meeting, I got an email from Exercise.com via Shah. Inside I establish an agenda, clear start and end times for the meeting, a list of the people who would exist on the call and their contact information (just the ii of u.s.a., in this case), and links to background information. All of that helped us to cut to the chase during the call, every bit Shah explained what makes a coming together productive, his motivation for starting Do.com, and how the nature of meetings among noesis workers is changing.

Jill Duffy: Let's talk near meetings and why people hate them.

Jason Shah: From what nosotros've found, well-nigh people nourish meetings that they are unprepared for. At that place's no expert reason the meeting is happening. There'due south no agenda distributed beforehand. People show upwards tardily and someone has to rehash things. People who organize them aren't e'er thoughtful about who has to be at that place, and so you lot stop up with large meetings in which half the people are optional, and mayhap half the people are core [attendees], and so the dynamic is off and it prevents productivity.

That boils down to wasted fourth dimension for busy people.

If you inquire anyone to sit in a room for xxx minutes and not accomplish annihilation, they'd retrieve you were crazy. Only that's what people are doing millions of times a day in the workplace.

JD: How would yous describe a productive meeting?

JS: You accept to have a few central ingredients. First, it has to really need to happen. If something can be handled over e-mail quickly, do that. Simply if it needs to be a meeting, then, okay.

Grooming is key: rolling out what's going to be discussed, who is responsible for what, those sorts of things that atomic number 82 to focused conversation. During the meeting: sticking to [the calendar], keeping time, taking notes, and ending on time.

The fourth dimension of the meeting matters a lot, too. A lot of people simply default to an hour. I noticed you were very deliberate and said 25 minutes for this conversation. I think that'south a good practice.

What happens after the meeting is key, too. If Bob and Stacey say they're going to follow upward with a new version of a slide deck, and Mark says he's going to send you the sales numbers, they actually accept to do that! We find that nigh people say, "Dandy! Practiced meeting!" and they get out and there's no follow up. And even if there is, it happens at the wrong time, which precipitates some other meeting or more unnecessary work.

So preparation, running the meeting well, following upwards successfully afterwards are key components of a practiced coming together.

JD: Project management tools, and other work management tools are designed to streamline work. The idea is to have fewer meetings and (and less email). You tin can assign each other tasks and deadlines without having meetings about them.

JS: Yep. On a macro level, hopefully nosotros're having fewer meetings as a consequence of those tools.

For example, if I come across mockups were updated on Dropbox, and I remember they're skillful, I don't need to run across with the designer to discuss them. She doesn't even have to notify me. I can merely fire off a message that says, "Hey, I saw the updated files." With something like Slack, I can quickly ask someone a question without having to meet to discuss the nature of the question.

Before, people wanted less technology considering information technology was hard, for example, to get the dongle for the monitor, or information technology was distracting for people.

I hope the ascent of those tools is leading to fewer meetings, but I don't know if in that location's physical information to support that yet, other than the propaganda that individual companies put out at that place. And in the coming together itself, I recollect the nature of those are irresolute because we're more technologically oriented. If we're using services exterior of a meeting, then the meetings themselves have to keep up with that as well.

JD: I like to have working meetings. They tend to be the most productive for me. I get together with a grouping of people, we sit down and practise the work we need to do right at that place, maybe with our tools projected on a screen.

JS: That makes me think of the flipped classroom model. The classroom is a place to do piece of work, rather than simply sentinel a presentation, much like a meeting shouldn't be called just to flip through a deck that somebody could easily email you.

JD: Let's talk a petty well-nigh Exercise.com. Give me the 30-second explanation of what Do.com is, and then we'll talk in more item about how you use it.

JS: Do.com is collaboration software for meetings. Information technology has nothing to do with the video and audio. It's all about the productivity of meetings.

With Exercise, people tin can set agendas then they know what to talk about. They can take notes in real time and assign tasks that interact with their other workflows. We're integrated with Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, Slack, Salesforce, etc.

Nosotros've had more than i.five million people participate in meetings across more than 20,000 companies. We're basically helping people have fewer meetings, ameliorate meetings, and hopefully exist more happy and productive at work.

JD: And it'southward a freemium model.

JS: It is. You lot can sign upwardly for gratuitous, and we have enough of gratis users.

JD: I of the things that struck me about Exercise.com is that it'due south really encouraging people to accept the right actions, as opposed to existence the solution in and of itself. I think a lot about things such as motivation and how we don't always behave in ways that are in our best interest. So I recall it's peachy when I find tools that are more about guiding us rather than giving us something. I got the sense that that's what Practise.com is virtually.

JS: Yes, I agree. Our belief is that meetings are as much a people problem as a engineering problem. For case, we don't need an email app to prevent Bob from accounting from sending a super long message that's hard to empathize. That probably has to do with company politics, Bob's ability to be a professional, the team dynamics, things like that. Some UI stuck in a Web browser is not going to alter Bob.

This is something I thought a lot nearly when I worked at Yammer previously. Yammer was trying to make companies more transparent. Simply honestly, Yammer was a tool for transparent companies, because information technology's very difficult to modify the civilization of an organization.

Do.com is very much a product that tries to help people be amend and gives them technology that enables them to practise that, rather than doing it for you. Bluntly, I don't even know if we could flip a switch and make a meeting more productive. That would be pretty magical!

Nosotros really believe that this is going to have staying power. If it'due south going to piece of work, it has to come up from people, and we're enabling them to become their best selves.

JD: Tell me the origin story of Do.com and why you're passionate virtually this project and visitor.

JS: I was working at Yammer prior to Microsoft buying Yammer. And equally y'all can probably imagine, after Microsoft bought the company, the culture started to change a lot, including adding a lot of bureaucracy and meetings.

I went through about a year, later that conquering, of finding that getting things done was actually difficult. Information technology was insane to me, particularly because we were a company originally built to make piece of work better for people!

Long story short, I was sitting in a terrible meeting one twenty-four hour period with x people, and I was drifting off thinking, "What am I doing hither?" The insanity of it just struck me.

If I invited you to a dinner political party and I didn't prepare beforehand to get the ingredients and have some concept that I wanted the guests to enjoy, and they show up and I say, "Hey, let's get to the grocery store and do this dinner political party," they'd say, "That's crazy! We're non going to effigy this out with yous. We came here for a dinner party!" Merely that'south what meetings are!

I thought it was crazy, and I had been itching to leave and commencement a new company.

JD: What other productivity apps or services do you utilise? Do you lot have any all-time practices for staying productive?

JS: Can I give an anarchistic answer? I recollect some of the best productivity apps aren't really productivity apps. Uber, for case, gives me way more productivity than an app like Asana. I become places faster and waste matter less time standing around in the rain waiting for a motorcar.

There's another tool I apply chosen BetterSnapTool, and again, it's not a archetype productivity tool. I set up my monitor with 3 columns, and with Windows Snap, I striking a shortcut key, and all my windows snap into place.

We use Trello and Slack here, also. We utilize Instacart for our groceries at the part. The fact that nobody has to worry about [grocery shopping] is helpful and somehow makes the states more than productive as a upshot.

JD: And what almost best practices or personal productivity habits?

JS: I've started blocking off time in my day on the calendar to make certain that stuff doesn't get run over. I've picked up meditation in the morning to help me set to zero and become articulate on what's of import.

Another one that's unconventional is delegating things. Information technology's not a Iv Hr Piece of work Week soundbite, but I have the personality that leads me to want to do everything myself. Becoming mindful nearly the need to default to delegation as opposed to default to doing things myself has been really impactful.

For me it's a mix of beingness more mindful, fourth dimension-battle things, and delegating. I'one thousand way more at peace and focused on the ii or iii things that affair every day. As a founder, you tin get distracted by anything related to the company, whether it's investor relations or a PR opportunity, and and so delegating has made me more productive.

JD: How large is your staff?

JS: X people. Delegation is getting easier, but that's super pocket-sized, of course, for a company.

JD: Yeah, merely it's of import for other entrepreneurs to know that, even if you lot're working with a very small team, delegation is nevertheless important.

As we wrapped up our chat, Shah guided the meeting to a natural shut by reviewing and reading aloud some notes he took during our call. He mentioned that we covered all the major points and talked nigh things that mattered, and he named a few other topics that had come up to listen while we spoke, simply that could wait for another time. Mayhap because I was unconsciously post-obit his atomic number 82, I summarized how I would follow up and gave a rough engagement for when I planned to publish an article. Information technology showed me the power of having a clearly defined and strongly led meeting.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/productivity/9592/jason-shah-founder-of-docom-on-making-meetings-more-productive

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