Make meetings productive with Confluence

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Peter F. Drucker (born November 19, 1909, Vienna, Austria—died November 11, 2005, Claremont, California, U.S.) was an Austrian-born American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation.

Shortly before he died in 2005, Peter Drucker was celebrated by BusinessWeek magazine as “the man who invented management.” When most people hear that name, they think of corporate management.

In The Effective Executive, Drucker writes that managers have a primary duty to define goals and plans to follow and are responsible for communicating all the information the team needs to accomplish them.

That means most managers spend more than half a day in meetings. So it’s essential to make meetings productive.

Making a meeting productive takes a good deal of self-discipline. It is necessary for the manager to determine what kind of meeting should be held and to stick to it.

The meeting should start with the purpose presentation, and it should be closed as soon as its objective has been achieved. A good manager shouldn't bring up a new topic for discussion. He sums up and updates the meeting.

A good follow-up memo is essential too. 

After any meeting, the manager should send a meeting note. In this note, he has to summarize the discussion and its conclusions and spell out any work assignment decided upon in the meeting. He specifies the deadline and the team member accountable for the assignment and sends a copy of the memo to everyone at the meeting.

How to do it all easily with Confluence?

Step 1 - Choose the template right for you or adjust an existing one.

Confluence provides you with an infinite number of different templates. Choose the template that best suits the type of meeting you want to hold or modify an existing template.

I love the template “Meeting Note” with some adjustments. My team and I decided to remove the column “Time” from the table and add two new columns: Customer (because we work for different customers) and Task/Decisions. We saved it as a new template in our team space for future reference.

Step 2 - Define goals.

Before the meeting, fill out the minute note with goals and agenda. Remember to clarify the purpose also to your team when sending the meeting invitation.

 

Step 3 - write your follow-up memo and assign tasks or write down decisions.

Add all participants in your memo. This way, they will receive a notification, and you don’t need to send an email to all.

Fill in the template summarizing the discussion, the decisions made, and the tasks assigned.

Recap all the tasks - remember to define a task owner and a due date. Confluence recognizes the first name you write as the owner and the date as the due date.

Write down all decisions made during the meeting.

 

Step 4 - create a summary page using macros.

I find it really useful to create a summary page using three macros.

• Create from template. Thanks to this macro, you can have an easy button on your Meetings Summary page to create a child page with the minute meeting template you chose. You can use it next time you have to track a meeting.

• Task Report - Using this macro, you can see all the incomplete tasks you have defined in your meeting note and in any meeting notes you will write in the future.

• Decision Report - like the task report macro, it collects all your decisions written in your meeting memos.

Now the best. At the next checkpoint, you can review previously assigned tasks and decisions made. Review completed activities and discuss ongoing ones. Write a new follow-up reminder with further actions and decisions, and don't miss a thing!

If you have Jira Work Management, you can link Confluence activities to JSM activities and take advantage of a thousand other features!

[Zoriana Bogutska_Adaptavist_]

Great article! Thanks for sharing :) 

[Andy Gladstone]

Finally was able to consume this article. Great use case illustration for productive meetings.