Do we still need the daily meetings in the workplace?
It’s surprising that in a day when social networking is an everyday term, that people still believe we need an hour long meeting every morning. With almost every new project, comes a new group of people. Figuring out where/when/how to communicate is always an important first step.. and it can be a difficult one if schedules are already packed. But getting back to my first point, we all know and understand that there is a virtual world where people interact (i.e. social networking) out there, so why don’t we hold some of our meetings there?
Google Groups, by no means a new application, is an unbelievable tool for saving time and increasing productivity. Instead of spending that hour in the morning talking about what we want to do or where we want to be, why not set these goals in a virtual space. Currently I’m working on a proposal for an online company. In my eight person group we have online discussions, we set our goals for the week, we have a file system where we place our graphics, videos, etc, and a working document that we can all contribute to. There’s even an option to have Google Groups notify all the members by email each time a reply has been made, or a document has been uploaded. At the end of each week we get together for half an hour to talk about major issues we need to work on.
So why online meetings in the virtual space? It’s a big time saver, and being someone who travels for work, it gives me the ability to participate in my group even when I’m not around. It helps me manage my meetings around my schedule and priorities, and it allows each member of the group to participate equally while saving the cost and time associated with meeting up face-to-face.