Tons of articles are published every week about workflow automation, time optimization and productivity at work. At Solid, we love digging through all that content and extracting the best every day.
Read below how Mattel fired their precedent CEO due to ineffective meetings. Discover all the tips and tricks that we have gathered for you to run 100% productive meetings.
Getting serious about your meeting problem
This is NOT a joke. Do you know the story of Bryan Stockton, CEO of a billion dollars company that recently got fired because of bad meetings?
Here is the statement of the WSJ’s article only a few weeks before the announcement:
Decisions on everything from marketing to product features dragged on through multiple sessions — often with no final decision being made. Employees would spend weeks putting together elaborate “decks,” or PowerPoint presentations, that could run to 100 slides or more, detailing the minutiae of every upcoming product for a brand and every facet of a marketing campaign.
Bryan Stockton tried to make some efforts. He had recently issued an edict to “speed up decision-making and free up executives by putting rules around meetings, including none to be held without a specific purpose”.
But it was already too late…Chief Executive Bryan Stockton had to resign a few days ago.
Prepare yourself … and others
Of course, we are all well aware that it is important to get prepared before running or attending a meeting. But if you want (trust me you’ll want) to avoid some endless “brainstorming fights”, especially when tackling thorny issues, you’d better prepare others for what you’re about to say.
Every so often, controversial topics must be discussed during a meeting. To sidestep potentially unpleasant reactions, hold a few one-on-ones with your most outspoken or influential team members to gauge likely responses.
says Marty Fukuda,Chief Operating Officer of N2 Publishing.
“Give every meeting a ‘Parking Lot’ “
That’s a powerful piece of advice from Craig Cincotta, Vice President of Brand Communications at Porch:
What do you do when you are in a meeting and you go way off topic, but the discussion is a good one to have? Put the idea in the “parking lot” and make a commitment to revisit that idea at a later date.
Don’t Waste those “30 minutes Gaps between Meetings”
We all have 30-minute gaps in our work schedules that we neither planned nor agreed and they may be the key to turbocharging your productivity. Just identify those gaps beforehand and plan some simple tasks, that could save your day according to Jordan Cohen in this Harvard Business Review article.
Four 30-minute gaps in your schedule can add up to 25% of your day.
Try Solid 
Solid promises to change meetings, by prepping attendees for a meeting beforehand, helping keep things focused on the agenda, and providing actionable summaries only minutes afterward. It works with Google Apps, Evernote & Slack.
You can request your private beta access >>Here.
Try some or all of the tips and let us know if you see the change 
?