Remedy for a slow hybrid meeting & Go from real-time to async meetings
Hey there! To new subscribers, welcome. To old ones, welcome back. 👋
I took a big long break from this newsletter, but am pumped to share more workshop examples and async tips with you (again).
Hope you enjoy it. If not, feel free to unsubscribe below.
Let's dive in!
– Arthur
Three Workshop Tips
1: Quick win for unstructured meetings
- Make a list of the topics you would like to talk about.
- Prioritize them together.
- Start with the winner and set an 8-minute timer.
- When the buzzer goes, move to the next topic or continue for max. four more minutes
2: Visualising the conversation
The problem with most meetings is that participants might think they are aligned – when they are actually not.
You can help a group by visualizing the conversation, for example:
- Write (or draw) what you hear, and ask if it's correct.
- Ask people to write (or draw) their ideas individually.
- Ask to collect screenshots and images.
Combining and improving tangible words and visuals takes way less energy from a group.
3: Remedy for a slow hybrid meeting
Allow all the meeting attendees to contribute. No matter their location.
The key is to do activities that enable the group to work together alone:
- Note: Write down thoughts individually (1-5 minutes).
- Share: Give time to read each other’s input (1-5 minutes).
- Vote: Ask everyone to pick their winner(s) (1-5 minutes).
- Decide: Have a short group discussion if necessary, and move forward (1-5 minutes).
A real-time, collaborative tool like Miro or Google Docs is essential to make this work.
Two Async Examples
1: Go from real-time to async daily standups
Get all the benefits from a daily standup, without disrupting everyone's time to focus:
- Do the first 5 minutes of your next daily standup in silence.
- Ask everyone to write their progress and issues down (in a Google Docs, Notion, or Confluence page).
- Take the next 10 minutes to review each other's updates.
- Give feedback on how to write more clearly and concisely.
Getting better at async communication takes practice. After a week or so, you can decide together if you all feel okay to move towards async dailies.
Pro tip: You can use your old meeting time as the deadline for the async daily.
2: Deliver your whole message at once
One-line messages in Slack and Microsoft Teams create a notification-tsunami for your team. 🌊
Take some time when writing your message to structure it, be concise and clear. Use paragraphs, bold, italics, bullets, and line breaks to make reading your message easier.
One Question For Your Team
That's all for this week. If you enjoyed today's issue, please reply (it helps with deliverability). If you didn't you can unsubscribe via the link👇.
See you next Wednesday — Arthur