• Shift info sharing and statusing to electronic workspace and focus valuable meeting time on discussion of "open" or "hot" issues where there is lack of alignment or disagreement.
• Build meeting agendas jointly, link meeting topics to relevant reference documents for pre-work and store meeting notes in common files for easy access and linking with follow-up Action Items.
• Gather input and test for agreement on simple or subordinate issues prior to meetings, build meeting discussions from pre-established common ground.

Historically, the primary approach to work coordination has been to bring people together in meetings. Workteams, taskforces and project teams routinely meet together to share information and status, plan for future operations, solve problems, make decisions, determine next steps and align their work efforts. Articles such as Meetings: A $420-billion waste of time suggest that many corporate meetings are a very expensive and often non-productive use of time.

This is certainly a number we should pay close attention to! In our experience, approximately 70% of time spent in meetings in generally consumed in either sharing information, giving status updates, creating lists of things to do, and/or brainstorming possibilities, etc. Another 20% is generally consumed with discussions during which people try to align on a common understanding but often find that some are lobbying for their own perspective only, others check out and don’t contribute, or the topic looses focus and discussions go off on tangents. 5 % is spent trying to find prior work or related materials and finally a mere 5 % may be left over for meaningful dialogue and serious discussions to reach agreement on important issues.

Teams working together using TeamRoom™ have found that by engaging in ongoing electronic dialogue, collaborative work proceeds at a much faster speed. Important work occurs in between meetings and meeting time is refocused to in-depth discussions to resolve outstanding issues and align on key decisions. All information sharing and statusing occurs in the TeamRoom™, posted in one place with continuous accessibility to all members. Team members give input to meeting agendas, commenting with their views on issues and responding to the comments of others. Valuable meeting time is not spent in soliciting multiple viewpoints in areas where people are already in agreement.