Team meeting audit: 3 tests for an effective Meeting OS (and 4 steps to fix it!)

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Team meeting audit: 3 tests for an effective Meeting OS (and 4 steps to fix it!)

Part II: Take action

1. Define our current Meeting OS

Which meetings are part of our Meeting Operating System?

While we will examine all of the data from the

Part I: Audit⁠

, let’s first focus on the meetings that currently form our Meeting Operating System. Feel free to read

what is a Meeting Operating System⁠

from our friends at Lucid Meetings, but a quick version is that our team Meeting OS starts from the list of our shared meetings. In this step, we collectively identify the meetings that currently form this OS and reflect on them.

Step 1: Define our meeting types.

Before we select which meetings to include, let’s discuss a taxonomy for meeting types. We can pick whatever we’d like here — the table below has a standard starter list, but there are good references in

this doc on how YouTube scaled⁠

or a

more thorough taxonomy from Lucid⁠

Meeting types

Meeting types

Type

Description

Decision Forum

Meetings where we get together to make key choices. These meetings tend to have different attendees every time — whichever group is seeking a key decision or feedback.

Group Information Sharing

Meetings whose primary purpose is information dissemination across a broader group. These meetings aim less at solving problems, and more at providing context to the team.

Sync Meeting

Meetings where a standing group meets regularly, often to check-in on a shared project, or hold themselves accountable to a shared goal.

General

Everything else.

There are no rows in this table

⁠

Step 2: Classify our meetings.

Now let’s select which meetings to include in our Meeting Operating System and categorize them into our taxonomy. Just click the checkbox next to each of the shared meetings, and fill in the Meeting Type column.

A few notes:

The table has been pre-filtered to just recurring meetings. It’s unlikely that ad hoc meetings are part of our Meeting OS, but you can click the checkbox to show them.

There’s a column for “Percent of this team” that is invited to the meeting. For example, you may want to leave out 1-1s or other sub-group meetings and focus on meetings where most of us attend.

The table below is filtered to just one row for each meeting that show up on multiple calendars. Click the checkbox to show the duplicates if you wish.

Filters

⁠

Show ad-hoc meetings.

⁠

Show the same event from multiple calendars.

Event

Start

Who

Percent of team in attendance

Recurrence

Include in Mtg OS

Meeting Type

Daily standup

Mon, May 10, 9:00 AM

100%

Recurring

Sync Meeting

Product review

Tue, May 11, 11:00 AM

100%

Recurring

Decision Forum

Lunch & Learn

Wed, May 12, 9:30 AM

100%

Recurring

Group Information Sharing

Friday demos

Fri, May 14, 11:00 AM

100%

Recurring

Group Information Sharing

Weekly Kick Off

Mon, May 10, 10:00 AM

75%

Recurring

Group Information Sharing

Strategy session

Tue, May 11, 8:00 AM

75%

Recurring

Decision Forum

Tag-up: GTM

Tue, May 11, 1:00 PM

75%

Recurring

Sync Meeting

Alan / Joel

Mon, May 10, 11:00 AM

50%

Recurring

Polly <> Joel 1:1

Tue, May 11, 10:30 AM

50%

Recurring

Buck / Joel

Fri, May 14, 12:00 PM

50%

Recurring

Coffee with Lola

Mon, May 10, 8:00 AM

25%

Recurring

Meeting with TJ

Thu, May 13, 8:00 AM

25%

Recurring

Team dinner

Thu, May 13, 2:00 PM

25%

Recurring

Tag-up: Product

Wed, May 12, 2:00 PM

Recurring

Sync Meeting

No results from filter

⁠

Step 3: Visualize our current Meeting OS.

Ok here’s the joint calendar of our Meeting OS! Notice that it’s colored by meeting type and there’s a chart to see the distribution of how we spent our time. Does this seem to reflect our current OS well?

Meeting OS map

Meeting OS map

Not synced yet

May 2021

Week

Today

9:00 AM

9:30 AM

10:00 AM

10:30 AM

11:00 AM

11:30 AM

12:00 PM

12:30 PM

1:00 PM

1:30 PM

2:00 PM

2:30 PM

3:00 PM

3:30 PM

4:00 PM

4:30 PM

May 10, 2021

Daily standup

, 9:00 AM

May 10, 2021

Weekly Kick Off

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

May 11, 2021

Strategy session

8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

May 11, 2021

Product review

11:00 AM - 12:15 PM

May 11, 2021

Tag-up: GTM

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

May 12, 2021

Lunch & Learn

9:30 AM - 11:00 AM

May 12, 2021

Tag-up: Product

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

May 14, 2021

Friday demos

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

⁠

Meeting types (by duration)

Meeting types (by duration)

Not synced yet

⁠

Step 4: Take Action → What changes do we need to make to our Meeting OS?

Ok now that we have a baseline, let’s reflect. Add and upvote ideas below. Then, we’ll discuss as a group. The one’s marked Let’s do this! will carry forward through our exercise.

⁠

Add action idea for our Meeting OS

⁠

Clear ideas

⁠

Action Idea

Author

Vote

Let's do this!