Although I am an advocate of using Online Meeting tools like Zoom or Skype to ensure engagement remains rich and interactive, with this explosion in homeworking I have noticed some lack of thought to it’s selective use. I see peoples calendars filled with so many online meetings that they have little time to accomplish anything else. Here are some tips to restore balance:

Be Brief – Keep meeting slots as short as possible. Skip the introduction and background, perhaps sharing pre-reading beforehand or ensure the Agenda covers the topic and goals. Consider the one hour default size as only for deep-dives. I’ve noticed that people get to the point quickly when the meeting slot is only 15minutes.

Stay On Topic – Keep to the goals in the agenda, try not to get sidetracked and go off-topic. It is very costly to hold-up a load of people who might not care about what is being discussed. Quickly take things offline when the topic deviates.

Use Other Channels – One way information can be shared via email, document, wiki page or others. You do not need a meeting to share information, update people and to get non-urgent feedback or comments. It can be simply laziness to just setup a call to brain-dump, rather than spend 15minutes writing your thoughts down and sharing that as a collaborative document. There are so many ways to collaborate online now … use them.

Sync Your Calendar and To Do List – plan your time carefully and if needed block-out periods in your calendar for getting your own work done. This prevents others from stealing your time by booking in meetings.

Reduce Attendees – keep meetings to only those who are really likely to participate. For others, who might just be interested (e.g. managers) share the outcomes and minutes. Again depending on participants and topics consider using other channels that could cover your needs – like an online chat tool, collaboration tools like Slack or Teams, or even just picking up the phone.