Great update meetings should help everyone make decisions, and make sure everything is moving in the right direction.
Bonus balls – here’s a couple of questions to kick-start your meeting and get you a long way. Try starting your next meeting with them, and see how you get on.
- “What do we hope to get out of this meeting?”
- “How will we know at the end, that we have been successful with our meeting aims?”
Document the answers (we use a wipe board to keep it visible and stop the meeting going off track).
If you like that, then with a bit of luck – you’ll love our top 6 tips for updating stakeholders in your meetings!
1. The 3 components of a project update.
- Update on the overall health of the project – is the project on track? Before suggesting new ideas demonstrate that you’re on track with everything that has been previously agreed.
- Update on project milestones – which ones are done and which ones are in progress.
- Highlight any issues / obstacles with the project – anything that might prevent the project from being delivered as agreed.
2. Effective signposting.
‘This is what I said I would do, this is what I’ve done, this is what I’m doing now, and this is what I’ll be working on in the future’
Good updates should help everyone clearly understand the projects current status and where it’s going. If you want people to buy into what you’re working on, you need to first reassure your audience that you’ve already completed any previously agreed actions.
3. Demonstrate how you’re going to execute the idea.
Having a brilliant idea isn’t useful to anybody unless you can demonstrate you know exactly what to do in order to turn it into a reality.
Good ideas can get killed by bad presentation. That sucks.
Be clear, precise, predict the concerns and questions upfront – seek to remove all doubt.
Try to explain new ideas in 2 parts:
- What you’re going to do.
- How you’re going to do it. (Bonus points if you can prove it).
4. Take notes
“In the morning, you know you won’t remember a thing”
Razorlight
In the wise words of Razorlight “In the morning, you know you won’t remember a thing” – so take notes.
Don’t trust yourself to remember any agreed actions.
Take clear notes to help you remember any agreed actions, project concerns or key areas you need to go away and look at.
Copper CRM offer some great tips how to take great meeting notes.
5. Be concise & crisp.
One of the hardest things is to be concise. Get to the point.
Respect your and everyone else’s time by sticking to the point.
6. Report on what’s changed.
When reporting on any changes to a project or agreed actions, firstly re-cap on what was originally agreed.
Explain why you had to make changes to the agreed actions and what that means to the person you’re updating.
That’s a wrap for us! We hope you got something new for your tool bag, and that you can go into those meetings like a boss.
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