Meeting experiment
Imagine opening your diary and seeing spacious time, portions helpfully allocated to connecting, doing and reflecting? We think we might have cracked it?!
What if your time was punctuated by thinking space, rather than endless meetings slotted in in gaps?
This year I’ve struggled to keep up with friends, I’ve prioritised my health, family health and commitments meaning that catch ups, coffees walks and lunches that I’ve wanted to do with friends haven’t happened.
Yet I’m leaving the year feeling full of friendship and recognise I have met this need for connection in 2 ways.
Sleepovers and Christmas Brunch! Earlier this year I stayed in a nice Airbnb locally to me with some close friends. Between us it didn’t cost more than a meal out, and we didn’t travel far, yet booking uninterrupted time together meant we had 2 days and an eve of time together. We had conversations that just wouldn’t have happened over a coffee. The second thing was Christmas brunch. Inviting lots of friends to pop in, no pressure on arrival/leaving time, lovely food and drinks, and creating space for people to have good catch ups rather than shouting at each other in a bar!
So how can I take inspiration from this…
and do meetings differently?
Time for an experiment!
Allocated Time
First, I reflected on why I met with people, this fell into 2 distinct themes, planning and connection which need time allocated in different ways. We have put some rules in around meetings,
Meeting weeks. The last week of each month is now our meeting week. Introduction/consultation calls can only be booked on this week and as far as possible, project planning meetings (when planning cant be done by email) will happen on this week. We will organise catch up with longer term project partners and clients on these weeks too.
The Brilliant Club rhythm. We love the connection that is created by spending regular time with people we work with. Meetings are one way to achieve this connection, but not the only way! Support offered through The Brilliant Club (monthly reflective practice, group podcast recordings, guest blog posts, coaching) are designed to create a rhythm of connection across our network.
Boundaries
I am anticipating that I will get some pushback on this from the people I work with! We have thought ahead about how to handle these.
Meetings can suck time. When you have lots of projects and clients on the go, its easy to be led by others agendas and timetables. Yet how often have we arrived at meetings then spent the first 30mins updating or sharing information that there has been no time to read ahead? Or people are late as other meetings have run over, and need to quickly focus on a different topic. Task switching like this depletes us of energy and capacity.
Being clear on the purpose of the meeting is vital, sometimes people want to meet to ensure everything is on track - building in regular update emails or a place people can check in on progress is useful here (we use trackers and progress slides that everyone can access and check in when they want an update). Sometimes people want to meet to bounce ideas around or get feedback, our The Brilliant Club sessions are great for this, bringing together groups of inspiring people to give lots of perspective and insight.
Recognise the need behind the request to meet and offer alternatives (We’d love to share updates with you, would a tracker work for you?)
Communicate our boundary and why it matters for us both (Lets be fully present when we meet? Task switching is tricky)
Invite something different (we are experimenting with ‘Meeting Weeks’ would you be open to trying this? )
Systems
Creating systems based on values, that create the patterns we want to see in our work, leading to the desired outcomes is a core principle of design thinking and vital to our work. We want to ensure we are flexible, whilst doing something different with how we work, so will tailor how we meet /work so we can meet our needs and others needs.
If we want repeated outcomes, we have to design processes that work for everyone.
I work with a V.A. and several students, I want to be organised and supportive so we all have a good experience of our shared work. So we keep on track with our work together using Trello (a project management system) and have 30min weekly check ins and whatsapp chat to stay connected.
My ‘to-do’ lists are structured around the expected time needed to do a task, meaning I can usually plan without becoming overwhelmed and I’ve got good at time blocking
1 client uses Slack to manage work, its really important things don’t get lost as the client has multiple plates spinning, so I have learnt how to use the platform and have a weekly slack appointment in my diary to add updates on this channel
Join the experiment!
2024 will see no more meetings squeezed into gaps, an end to dashing between online meeting platforms and real life coffee shops. In March we will share how this is going! We would LOVE you to be inspired by this and change how you organise and spend your meeting time, let us know how you are getting on?
In the meantime,
Join the rhythm of connection and support through The Brilliant Club
If you’d like to work together, schedule a meeting slot and lets spend some intentional time together! - here is the ‘meeting week’ link!
