While meetings are intended to be productive and provide improvements within the workplace, we all know that they can easily get off topic and run much longer than anticipated. However, a Nashville managed service provider can help make your next business meeting more successful, and maybe even take the dread out of seeing that time blocked out on the calendar. Here are a few simple steps you can take to ensure you have smooth and productive meetings. 

Invest in IT support in Nashville

IT support in Nashville will be able to customize tools for your particular business that make sense for meetings whether it’s video conferencing, communicating via speaker phone, or organizing the files that you’ll be sharing on laptops. If you’ve ever found yourself standing in front of your computer or other forms of technology for fifteen minutes trying to get it to work, then get in touch with a managed service provider to ensure that you don’t waste time at the beginning of the meeting with tech issues.

Have the meeting leader set the agenda

To have a successful meeting, you’ll want to assign one person to lead the meeting. It’s like the saying that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. When too many hands are involved, a meeting can easily go off the rails and become a waste of time. Have the meeting leader set the agenda in advance and give everyone involved plenty of time to prepare. If people walk in not knowing what they are going to be addressing, you’ll lose out on valuable insights that require information and preparation.

Watch the length of your meeting

Keep meetings short and to the point, and you’ll discover that more people stay engaged and less chatter goes one during the event. Try to squeeze everything that you need to address to under an hour, and you’ll find that people are more willing to listen and be attentive knowing that they’ll be able to get back to their schedule soon. If you do call in a Nashville managed service provider, be sure that you make sure it doesn’t cut into the meeting time, and that you proactively get them involved.

Take questions at the end

Whether you’re the one that continually asks for clarification during the meeting or you see others asking and can immediately tell it’s getting everyone off track, it can be frustrating! At the beginning of the meeting, have everyone put away any distractions such as cell phones, and give attendees a blank piece of paper to write questions down on as the session progresses. Let them know, if a question pops up, then write it down. You’ll find that many times the answers will come later in the meeting or the question becomes irrelevant as you dig deeper into the topics being covered. In the last ten minutes before releasing the group, take the questions that are left unanswered and resolve them.