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Are you holding the right kind of meeting?

By Skype for Business Team as written on blogs.office.com.
Meetings are starting to get a bad rap. A Harris survey for Clarizen reports 46 percent of employees would rather do anything other than attend a status meeting—8 percent said they’d prefer a root canal. Regardless of your feelings about them, meetings are necessary to coordinate and collaborate. But, before you book yet another room and conference line on autopilot, consider meeting in whatever way is best for your goals.
Brief check-ins
Check-ins are ideal for a focused and quick conversation. Skeptical? These are more doable than you may think. Harvard Business Review recommends keeping them to 15 or 30 minutes whenever possible.
Book a brief check-in if you need to:
  • Cover quick updates, discuss feedback or get simple group input.
  • Meet for an informal 15 minutes with 5–25 people.
Ad-hoc updates
On-the-fly ad-hoc meetings allow for teams to touch base on something in real-time, often without much planning. According to Business Insider, these types of meetings are not only on the rise, they can be more productive than traditional meetings. Ad-hoc updates can be both in-person or attended from multiple locations. For smaller groups (three to five participants) consider instant messages. For larger groups or those needing deeper collaboration, conference or video calls are ideal. Want to be even more efficient? Explore screen or document sharing and collaboration solutions to work in real-time.
Consider an ad-hoc update if you need:
  • An unstructured way to ask quick questions.
  • Real-time project updates.
  • Team-based connection with 3–15 people.
Brainstorm sessions
Brainstorming is great to get high-volume ideas to later distill and present to decision makers. Whether in person or virtually (video call is recommended), prepare a space for people to share ideas in a constructive and judgment-free way. You never know the direction a brainstorm will take you—that’s sometimes when the best ideas surface.
Schedule a brainstorm session if you need:
  • Many new ideas at once.
  • A variety of opinions and points of view.
Traditional meetings
Whether you’re meeting in a conference room, boardroom, auditorium, with a virtual audience or a combination, traditional doesn’t mean boring. Leverage these meetings to deliver strategic messages. If you’re reaching a virtual audience or both on- and off-site stakeholders, explore virtual meeting solutions that allow for the same level of participation, no matter how (and from where) they’re joining.
It’s time for a traditional meeting if you need to:
  • Reach a larger audience (30–10,000 participants).
  • Present information (versus collaborate).
  • Limit and structure audience participation (i.e., Q&As, overall sentiment, etc.).
Regardless of the meeting type, take the time to create an agenda, share it with your team beforehand and stick to it.
Hold the right kind of meeting
Get better results and show your employees you value their time by selecting the right meeting type. For online meetings, Skype for Business can keep everyone on task and informed. Also, check out The Ultimate Meeting Guide to learn everything from preparing for and running a successful meeting to incorporating technological tools that enhance productivity.

The Look of Modern Meetings

An increasingly global workforce, mobility, and video are top trends impacting the evolution of the modern meeting.
As written by Michelle Burbick on No Jitter.
Blue Jeans Network recently released its third-annual State of the Modern Meeting Report , which uses data from more than five million BJN business video collaboration meetings in 177 countries to draw conclusions about how meetings are evolving over time.
This year's report highlights several notable trends. BJN has found, for example, that weekend meetings are becoming more frequent. BJN data shows that 49% more meetings are taking place on Saturdays, and Sundays have seen an 84% increase in meetings over the previous couple years. I suppose this reflects that the traditional workweek is on its way out -- something us Millennials have been crabbin' about for a while now.
Online meeting use surges when extreme weather strikes, with video meeting activity increasing by 35% during the Boston blizzard last year and by 26% during the flooding that hit Texas this past May. As this trend illustrates, conferencing technology is making it easier to maintain business as usual in situations when that might not have been possible previously.
As you will see in the infographic below, the corridor from New York to Los Angeles is traveled the most, both physically and virtually speaking, while professionals on the West Coast take more meetings then their counterparts in other regions.
While the use of conference room systems is growing, mobility is key. A quarter of all meetings have at least one mobile video caller, BJN reports, with 78% of mobile video meetings coming from Apple devices. The rise of remote workers and increasing globalization of teams are propelling the use of video, enabling team members to meet "face to face" no matter where they are or what devices they are using.
Take a look at the full infographic to get a more complete snapshot of the modern meeting.

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