Picking up great meeting habits can be hard, especially when your enterprise tech isn’t helping matters. Now Docket makes it easy. Not just for you, but your entire organization.
Picking up and maintaining great meeting habits can be hard. The enterprise technology your team uses may even be part of the problem. With Docket, you’ll have support to improve not only your meetings, but your organization’s. And when your team members improve their meeting habits, everyone’s meetings and productivity improves.
Great habit #1: Agendas for meetings
How your tech isn’t helping: “I can’t tell from my calendar which meetings have agendas.”
It’s true. You can’t! Google and Microsoft Teams may enable the ability to link documents to calendar events however, there is no way to quickly see which meetings do or do not have them. This means you need to manually spend the time clicking through your calendar or through your email to track where you left off and where you need to pick up the conversation. A waste of time, and possibly also a waste of some of the great ideas and key decisions you might have missed capturing.
How Docket makes the great habit easy:
Anyone using Docket has access to Docketboard, which shows which meetings do or don’t have agendas, it links you to each of those meetings to quickly take action and get those agendas rolling. It also informs you which meetings you don’t have goals for along with whether the agenda or recap was shared.
You no longer need to try to guess from a busy calendar when Docket will take you straight to those meetings and help you prepare quickly for those meetings ahead. More about Docketboard.
Best Practice Tip: Not only is it important to create agendas for meetings but also to have goals for those meetings so your guests have a clear understanding of what the purpose of the meeting is for. In addition to agendas that need to be created, Docketboard will make sure you know if your meetings need a goal or need an agenda or recap to be shared as well.
Great habit #2: Follow-up meetings are scheduled in the right cadence to reduce gaps between meetings
How your tech isn’t helping: “I get off a meeting without scheduling the follow-up meeting.”
Unless you can rely on a recurring meeting cadence, which is not always possible, your calendar cannot guarantee your next meeting with a client, boss, or anyone else will be expediently scheduled. Typically, after a meeting, scheduling the next requires a juggling act of fate to coordinate schedules, sometimes through an intermediary like an executive assistant. If not done quickly, too much time can pass and momentum can suffer.
How Docket makes the great habit easy:
Docket’s advanced meeting Scheduler provides you with the ability to schedule a follow-up meeting straight from your….meeting. For example, next time you are on a call with a client and agree you need to meet again, you can use Docket’s Schedule Follow-Up button in your meeting workspace. This will immediately launch you into the Scheduler that will bring overall critical meeting information including meeting title, conference rooms, video conferencing, and guest list from your current meeting. So all you have to do is lock in your next date and time and let Docket do the rest.
No need to share a scheduling link and hope the recipient responds with a mutually acceptable appointment time. Use Docket to get that follow-up immediately on the calendar.
Best Practice Tip: You can use Docket’s schedule follow-up option for any meeting whether you are live or not. It immediately saves you time from having to add all of the details and lets you skip straight to booking time. And the best part is Docket’s recommended times feature. You don’t have to skim through everyone’s available time…Docket will take you straight to the best times everyone can meet.
Great habit #3: Create and share meeting agendas in advance
How your tech isn’t helping: “I get off a meeting without scheduling the follow-up meeting.”
Google and Microsoft Teams don’t prompt you to create agendas. They obviously have document-related features but these simply help you create…a blank document. You still have to create those agendas and the other tasks it takes to prepare yourself and others for meetings.
How Docket makes the great habit easy:
Docket’s Scheduler takes you straight from scheduling a meeting into building your agenda to ensure you don’t set it and forget it until it is too late. While topics are top of mind, you can immediately begin building the agenda when prompted after scheduling your meeting. Don’t know where to start in building your agenda? Docket’s recommended templates and templates library are included in the workspace to ensure you get your agenda off to a good start.
Stop creating agendas at the last minute. Docket will help you more naturally prepare for your meetings as they are being scheduled
Best Practice Tip: Combining your scheduling and agenda creation is a great way to ensure meeting readiness for all parties. Even if the agenda isn’t fully known at the time of scheduling, you can use Docket’s Collaboration option to share an agenda with other guests to start building the agenda prior to the meeting.
Great habit #4: Avoid meeting conflicts
How your tech isn’t helping: “My calendar lets me schedule and stack meetings as if it isn’t a problem at all.”
Your Google and Microsoft Teams calendars can show you overlaps, but it takes time to visually dissect your busy work day to fix the problems you uncover. And if you don’t catch them right away, you will more than likely be canceling on people who need time with you which can create frustration, negativity, and impacts to projects.
How Docket makes the great habit easy:
Use Docketboard in Docket to quickly identify which meetings are in conflict so you can address and reschedule as needed. Docketboard shows you exactly which meetings you need to review for conflicts so you can take action.
No more disappointing others when you can see the potential impacts and address them head on. More about Docketboard.
Best Practice Tip: Make sure your team is using Docket’s scheduler to validate potential conflicts before scheduling over other’s meetings. Using Docket’s recommended meeting times is a sure way to avoid these types of situations.
Great habit #5: Make sure my meetings always include a video link
How your tech isn’t helping: “I create and send meeting requests but sometimes forget to add video conferencing.”
If you remember to add conferencing at the time of scheduling, then your calendar is helping you do a great job of making sure everyone can log on. However, your calendar will not help you identify which meetings you forgot to include video conferencing for or for meetings you don’t own. How much time is wasted going to a meeting where video conferencing was not included and the dance of emails to say, “Could you please add video conferencing?” begins. Once everyone is finally on the call, minutes have been lost along with momentum for the topics at hand.
How Docket makes the great habit easy:
Docketboard to the rescue! You can also see what meetings are missing video conferencing by reviewing your Docketboard. For any meeting with more than one guest, Docket will alert you and help you get straight to the meetings that may require video conferencing. And if you are not the meeting owner, use the Request Video Conferencing option to ask your host to add conferencing before the meeting starts.
Don’t wait until a meeting starts to find out video conferencing is missing. Keep you, your guests, and your hosts as productive as possible using the valuable Docketboard tool. More about Docketboard.
Best Practice Tip: Make sure your team checks their Docketboard at the beginning of each week along with daily to verify conflicts and video conferencing are addressed as soon as possible to keep meeting time focused.
Calendars may feel like a comfort zone but they offer little beyond scheduling. Docket extends your calendar, communication, and preparation to enable you to support your team, organization, and clients as the key to hybrid meeting success.
