Lucid Meetings Blog

John Antill works as a U.S. Army Expeditionary Civilian Workforce Knowledge Manager. In his pursuit of a Master's Degree at Kent State University, he decided to map the flow of information while working as the Knowledge Manager for Army Joint Force Headquarters Cyber using the military's Operational Management Rhythm approach. He focused specifically on the meetings, or meeting flow models, asking:

• Which meetings are we running now? What's their purpose? 
• How are these meetings intended to fit into the larger information flow?
• Is the necessary information reaching the right people at the right time?
• Where are the gaps? Where are the redundancies?
• How might we re-work our meetings to better achieve our objectives?

When he was done, the Army worked to implement his suggestions. Early results include:

• 105 staff hours per week saved by redesigning one meeting
  A 30-person weekly meeting that had run four hours each week was reduced to 30 minutes.
• 70% fewer meetings
  178 regularly scheduled meetings involving multiple groups reduced to 55
• Radically increased workforce adaptability
  The inter-department meeting schedule for a 4-Star Command, including meetings that coordinate the work of nearly 1.5 million people, was successfully shifted to adapt to the Covid-19 lockdown in a matter of weeks.

Too much time wasted in unproductive meetings.  Ineffective meetings plague companies around the globe, making this a top complaint for employees at every level.

Conservation Colorado engaged Lucid Meetings to help them improve their meeting performance, which had been consistently rated the number one problem in their annual employee feedback surveys.

I spoke with Nikki Riedt, Conservation Colorado's Operation and Finance Director, at the end of our engagement together about their experience. I'm delighted to be able to share that feedback with you here.

Background

Conservation Colorado is an organization working to protect Colorado’s climate, air, land, water, and communities through organizing, advocacy, and elections.

The level of urgency and scrutiny surrounding climate change has skyrocketed. In response to this rapidly changing landscape, Conservation Colorado's changed too. By the time they contacted Lucid, the executive team featured many leaders who were new to the organization within the past year, and the total number of employees was growing rapidly.

What wasn't changing? The way they all felt about their meetings.

It doesn't matter what kind of team you work on or what you're trying to do - if you can't get that team to all agree and do their part, you fail.

Teamwork is the practice of agreeing on a shared goal and then dividing the work required to achieve that goal amongst the team members. To get that agreement and coordinate all that doing, you've got to communicate.

We're coming up on our 10th anniversary here at Lucid, and over all those years, we've done our fair share of failing. One of our more painful failures came about through a failure to effectively communicate.

About iWMS

iWMS is an international HighJump software service provider.

Since its inception in South Africa 2009, the company has extended its operations into India, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

This global expansion allows iWMS to access the best global resources while also expanding their market share. The combination allows them to blend teams and make sure the right level of experience is available for their customers.

iWMS CEO, Richard Evans, noticed that his internal and customer meetings were going well, but he thought they could use a bit more structure.

He decided to look for a way to improve the company’s management meetings, and decided that it was important to document decisions, formally track action items, and follow up after meetings to make sure everyone was sticking to commitments.

Miawpukek Mi’kamawey Mawi’omi is a First Nation Reserve located at the mouth of the Conne River on the south coast of the island of Newfoundland.

Over the years the community has seen a steady growth in government, social reforms, health, education, economic development, culture and traditions.

As Systems Analyst and coordinator of a number of regular meetings, René Jeddore recognized a need to build more efficiency into their everyday operations in order to maintain the Council's progress.

The Council's reliance on paper processes led René to search for a new solution that included a way to digitize the Council's records. 

Lisette Sutherland runs Collaboration Superpowers, a workshop facilitation business, from her remote office in the Netherlands.

Professional facilitators from all over the world license her materials to teach her Work Together Anywhere Workshop, both online and in person.

When preparing for the workshop, Lisette spends a few hours setting up each section by creating an agenda, uploading documents, and setting up multiple software platforms for her participants.

However, because she uses Lucid for the online meeting segment, she’s able to leverage a pre-defined meeting template, automating both setup and follow through—saving her a minimum of thirty minutes in preparation time.

Meeting agenda templates also allow new facilitators to get up and running quickly, making her licensing business more scalable.

Over the course of a year, this huge time savings allows her to focus on improving the workshop curriculum and managing high-level business activities.