Meeting Process Redesign
Meeting process redesign must progress from discrete events to continuous flow. Laying the meeting process upon the new team flow as described in the previous section, the team meeting process is transformed. The digital group memory is the glue that holds the process together. Teams use the DGM to prepare for meetings, conduct meetings, follow-up on meeting actions, and then prepare for the next meeting. Figure 2 shows how team meetings become a continuous process rather than a discrete event.
Figure 2: The meeting process
Items 1 to 5 in the diagram are as follows:
- Pre-meeting - team members contribute ideas for agenda; final agenda is posted; pre-reading material (files) are posted.
- Face-to-face meeting - during the meeting, the agenda is projected on a wall screen; action items, decisions, additional comments are captured in digital group memory and also projected on the screen.
- Post-meeting/pre-meeting - action items are executed and updates, comments, outcomes are posted in digital group memory; agenda items and pre-read material are prepared for next meeting.
- Distributed meeting - the meeting is held with several members in other locations; therefore, audio-conferencing, real-time collaborative technologies, and the digital group memory are used during the meeting. Real-time technologies are used to display presentation materials on team member's PC screens. The digital group memory is used to reference action items and other materials needed by the team during the meeting as well as capture new action items and notes.
- Ongoing - the team continues as needed with the various combinations of face-to-face meetings and distributed meetings with post-meeting/pre-meeting work.
With team members updating actions, sharing interim and final deliverables in their digital group memory, the team leader does not have to consolidate individual status reports because any team member can retrieve it at any time. Time used for collecting status whether prior to a meeting or during a meeting is eliminated. Now, the team can allocate and use meeting time for tasks that are best done in a face-to-face manner, such as problem definition and solving.
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The
New Team Heart Beat
