Team Meetings Made Easy with KanBo Board

While team meetings are essential for sharing information and effective collaboration, they can also be a resource drain for both startups and large organizations.

On one hand, these meetings allow every member of the team to contribute and become a part of the progress. On the other hand, meetings often lack any clear agenda or timeline which results in a waste of valuable business hours. It should be kept in mind that in the post-pandemic world, meetings don’t only refer to one-on-one or face to face interactions. They also include online meetings where team members participate remotely through digital tools.

That’s why it has become increasingly important for organizations to find efficient tools that empower them to conduct highly efficient and effective team meetings regardless of where the members are. KanBo software provides all the required ingredients for organizations to hold productive meetings that feature a clear agenda and purpose. With KanBo, meetings are no longer an isolated form of collaboration but an effective contributing factor of a highly productive process.

KanBo for Team Meetings

KanBo enables organizations to hold effective meetings by allowing managers and head of departments to bring a selected group of employees together to achieve a well-defined objective. It provides an open forum for discussion with tangible outcomes that can be followed up on. A productive meeting involves clear action points, an agenda, a list of notable ideas shared during the discussion, informed decisions, and a mutual understanding of working together to achieve the goals. Here is how KanBo helps you out.

When you open the KanBo Team Meetings Board, you will see a wide variety of components that you can interact with. On top of the board, there is a list of people who are likely to be involved in your meetings. You can see their profile pictures in thumbnails so you can identify them with ease. The Team Meetings Board has a by default calendar view which gives quick and easy access to date-wise meetings.

The other elements include lists, views, filters, and basic settings and preferences. Let’s discuss the lists in detail.

List – Meeting Instructions and Info

The first list is present for highlighting all the key pointers and sharing the most important information related to meetings. As a manager, you can share tips, hints, and industry’s best practices for conducting and contributing to effective and result-oriented meetings. You have to remember that the criteria of a good meeting are defined by your organization. You can set up rules, preferences, restrictions, and suggestions that comply with the company culture.

This enables employees to get a general idea of what an average meeting would look like. For instance, you can specify the maximum duration of a meeting so it doesn’t exceed a certain time limit. This can help in reducing the loss of valuable business hours while encouraging the members to stay focused. On the same note, managers can make a clear and precise agenda a mandatory prerequisite that allows the organization to hold highly informative and result-driven meetings.

List – Weekly & Monthly Meetings

The other lists categorized on a month-to-month basis so you can view all the meetings held in a particular month at a single glance. These meetings include both monthly meeting and weekly meetings.

• Monthly Meetings– These are generally conducted once every month to discuss the most significant and pressing action points. This type of meeting has a multi-point agenda with a number of topics that are required to be discussed. At the end of a monthly meeting, informed decisions are made to ensure the progress is made to achieve the shared goal.
• Weekly Meetings– These are usually conducted once every week but can be held twice a week or even more frequently depending on the organization’s work culture. This type of meeting is held to share the progress and discuss any challenges that the team members are facing.

Card – Monthly Meeting

When you click on the card, it will open to reveal more details. You will be able to view who is holding the meeting and who were the other members that participated in the meeting. Apart from the date and time, the card also contains any conversations related to the topics that were discussed during the meeting. There is also a dedicated section for the meeting agenda which contains separate topics for each subject or matter that was discussed in the meeting. Each topic has a time duration assigned to it. While the duration is usually 10 minutes, depending on the importance and nature of the topic, you can set it to be lower or higher.

You will also see that each topic has a dedicated card and you can click on it to view all the information including the assignee. You can add new elements if you want and see the status in the left column. There’s another dedicated section related to team updates which allows you to view what each team has been doing and the status of their progress. If there is something that needs to be discussed but it is not important enough to be a separate topic, it can be added to side notes.

There is another section that allows you to upload documentation related to the meeting. For instance, minutes of the meeting, agenda, reports, etc. All these sections are especially designed to bring every team member up to speed so they can work effectively and efficiently.

Card – Weekly Meeting

The card of weekly meetings is almost similar but it doesn’t have the topics, only team updates. You can assign the time duration to each team so they can talk about their performance and subsequent goals. Other options of the card are exactly the same as the monthly meeting.

How to Use Cards

It is quite evident that cards act as a central hub of information for all the team meetings and could be used effectively to improve productivity and operational efficiency. To add a new monthly or weekly meeting card, click on the ‘+’ button and select your desired template, for example, monthly meeting. You will also be required to add a date and then a new card for your meeting will be created.

Once you open the card, you will see familiar options in the form of meeting preparation. You will have to specify and define each one of these to ensure every team member is on board and contributing to their full potential.

• Add meeting lead– If you are going to lead the meeting, you can add yourself as a meeting lead. Otherwise, you can choose any experienced member of your team who has demonstrated leadership qualities and has a demonstrable potential to lead a group of people.
• Set an agenda as a to-do list – If the agenda of your meeting includes actionable points, you can directly set it as a to-do list and specify the team members who are responsible for completing every task. This gives you a quick and convenient way to go from planning to execution.
• Assign a protocol scribe as a coworker– The person who is going to fill in the role of protocol scribe will be required to be added to the meeting as a coworker.
• Set a date– Once you have gone through all of the above steps, it is time to specify a date for your meeting. Ensure that you have confirmed with every team member that they will be available on that date during the hours you want them to be in your meeting.
• Send out MS Teams invitation– This part is self-explanatory as this option will enable you to send out invites to your team members through MS Teams. It allows you to notify your coworkers about the meeting as soon as you have created one in KanBo.
• Adding team members to the meeting– After the meeting has been created successfully, you can add meeting members by simply dragging and dropping them onto the meeting card.

How to Use Sub-Cards

If every agenda topic is important to the organization, then you would want it to be a proper card instead of just a dedicated section. You can create sub-cards by mentioning people in each agenda topic who is responsible for that task. You also have the option to convert it to a child card which will turn every topic into a more versatile and information-rich space.

Once you have created a child card, you can apply the template afterwards. For instance, the Big Topic template allows you to have multiple sections including the following:

• Topic Description– Contains all the information about that particular agenda topic.
• Question and Answers– Includes all the questions asked during the meeting and their answers. This provides an exceptional way to communicate the solutions to issues and concerns of the members who might not have attended the meeting including higher management personnel.
• Decisions– After every agenda is discussed comprehensively, a decision is reached through the method specified in the Meeting Instructions and Info list.
• Documents– Every document related to the meeting including reports, minutes of the meeting, agenda, notes, etc. can be uploaded to this section.

Switch the view to subcards if you just want to see subcards for every month. You can also use the chat option in the second horizontal pane to have a discussion about the meetings in real-time.

Following Meetings

You can also follow each card to keep an eye on the progress of each meeting. You will receive updates in the form of notifications if any changes are made to the meeting you are following. You can also set email notifications if you want. This way you won’t miss any updates. When you are on the board, you will see an eye icon on the cards of the meetings that you are following.

Conclusion

There are no two arguments about the fact that meetings have become increasingly important in the post-pandemic world. They are especially crucial when employees are working remotely and they need to ensure every team member remains updated so the productivity and progress don’t suffer. KanBo software provides a comprehensive yet simple solution to address all the major challenges of modern team meetings. Whether you want to set up a clear agenda or ensure every decision is executed as planned, KanBo provides a way to achieve effective and actionable meetings.