Can you new business avoid face-to-face meetings almost entirely? It may be difficult to run a business without meetings, but your focus should be on building and improving your product. Too many meetings could delay your product launch, especially if you are new business. New businesses need to move fast, work smart, talk less and focus on achieving goals. It’s as simple as that. Anything else is business fat that needs to be cut down.
Focus on the results!
I cannot overemphasize the importance of results if you want to success as a new business. The rate of small business failure is overwhelming, hence the need to get your team to work. Too many and long meetings disrupt the creative flow of your employees. Your best option is to meet only when it’s necessary to either give status update or deliver on your goals for the week or month.
Create a sustainable culture from the beginning!
Meeting rooms are best for the discussion of broad issues, plans and aspirations for your new business, even that can be limited to make sure management is back at their desks working on building the real product.
Small companies are able to run effective meetings because teams are small, hence reaching consensus takes less time. Once you begin to scale, you may not be able to organize productive meetings the way you expect it. Create a sustainable meeting culture that will still be relevant as you grow. Search for available venues on venuefinder.com
Make use of collaborative apps
Some technology businesses are able to work more and meet less with the help of smart apps and collaboration tools that help teams create to-do lists, take notes and network with each other for better results. There is therefore little room for personal face-to-face meetings. As more startups move to the cloud, it’s getting a lot easier for businesses to work and collaborate online and avoid meetings that may delay product development.
Get real work done!
Whilst you meet, you primary competitor is busy building products and creating services for the same consumers you intend to serve. In “Rework” (a book by 37 Signals), the company urges startups and creative professionals to always remember that “every minute you avoid spending in a meeting is a minute you can get real work done instead.”
No matter what needs to be discussed, it’s important to keep your meetings short, simple, focused on the achieving results. Effective meetings should be about solving pending problems that cannot resolved via email, IM or your collaborative app.
Your company’s culture is built around the values you share, the way you communicate, how you conduct your meetings, your hiring practices, promotion criteria , how you treat employees etc. Create a business that attracts and retains talent.
