Goodmeetings operates as an online video and AI enabled platform.

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Transform your sales and customer success teams. Record calls / customer meetings, review AI-curated reels of key meeting moments, human-level summaries / notes. Coach and collaborate with meeting insights.

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Goodmeetings | 1,919 followers on LinkedIn. Infuse magic into remote sales | Goodmeetings is an AI-powered Meeting Insights &amp; Automation Platform that transforms customer-facing revenue teams into productive high-performance units. Sales and customer success teams can focus solely on customers ...

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Information on valuation, funding, cap tables, investors, and executives for Goodmeetings. Use the PitchBook Platform to explore the full profile.

Goodmeetings Company Profile: Valuation & Investors | PitchBook

Goodmeetings - AI-based platform offering video conferencing solutions. Raised a total funding of $1.7M over 1 round from 22 investors. Valued at $6.1M. Founded by Srinivasan Narayan, Abhijeet Sahoo and 2 others in the year 2021. Goodmeetings has 1334 competitors.

Goodmeetings - Company Profile - Tracxn

Compare the best business software and services based on user ratings and social data. Reviews for CRM, ERP, CAD, PDM, HR, and Marketing software.

goodmeetings Reviews 2024: Details, Pricing, & Features

&quot;Goodmeetings (goodmeetings.in) is a video first sales intelligence SaaS that provides toolsets, guidance and accountability for inside sales teams (think of Salesforce built for the video age) to sell 10x better vis-a-vis selling over zoom etc. It also provides senior sales leaders insights ...

GoodMeetings Company Profile, information, investors, valuation ...

A modern online magazine for MICE matters and business travel, wrapped in readable - and durable - stories.

Goodmeetings

Goodmeetings&#x27;s competitors and similar companies include Tradeswell, Dianthus, Netwave and PipeCandy.

Top Goodmeetings Competitors and Alternatives | Craft.co

Founded by Abhijeet Sahoo, Srinivasan Narayan in the year 2021 · Valued at $6.1M · Srinivasan Narayan, Sujeet Kumar, Chiratae Ventures, Redbrook are among its shareholders · AI-based platform offering video conferencing solutions

Goodmeetings | Tracxn

Goodmeetings develops an artificial intelligence (AI) based video meeting review tool for effective remote team performance management. It connects the business&#x27; sales stack to drive sales. The company also offers additional features such as live transcription, detailed sales call analytics, ...

Goodmeetings - Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees, ...

The sales function is the growth engine of any company and business. And your … Read more

Goodmeetings Blog - Ideas to infuse magic into remote sales

Introducing AI-curated reels that condense hours of meetings into minutes of key moments - All recordings, transcripts, and insights organized in an easily searchable library - Meeting summaries &amp; action items on par with those written by a human

Goodmeetings - Product Information, Latest Updates, and Reviews ...

With the help of Capterra, learn about Goodmeeting, its features, pricing information, popular comparisons to other Meeting Room Booking System products and more. Still not sure about Goodmeeting? Check out alternatives and read real reviews from real users.

Goodmeeting Pricing, Alternatives & More 2022 - Capterra

Goodmeetings is a rapidly growing India-based company founded in 2021. Its cutting-edge online video and AI-enabled platform has made significant strides in the sales intelligence industry. With its headquarters located in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, the company has a talented team of 11-50 ...

Goodmeetings Boosts Efficiency with DevRev's PLuG Widget

Learn about the best Goodmeetings alternatives for your Conversation Intelligence software needs. Read user reviews of Gong, Outreach, and more.

List of Best Goodmeetings Alternatives & Competitors 2023

Goodmeetings is an AI-driven video meeting platform that empowers sales teams during remote meetings with real-time insights and coaching, transforming their performance

“You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question.” —Bill Gates This quote perfectly summarizes all my frustrations about meetings. Many studies have highlighted the inefficiency of meetings at work. Still, meetings keep increasing in length and frequency, to the point where in them (it was less than 10 hours in the 1960s). It would not be a bad thing if meetings were all useful, but we all know how inefficient most of them are. I’ve been experimenting a lot with meetings in my company and have learned how to make the most out of them—here’s what I’ve discovered and want to share with you so you can use your time well and hold productive, effective meetings. executives spend around 23 hours a week Meetings are bad for your productivity We usually work on two different schedules: the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule. This concept was first described by Y Combinator's founder, Paul Graham, in . In this essay, Graham explains how makers are task-oriented and need a long stretch of time to focus (programmers or writers are typical examples). On the other hand, managers use mainly communication and meetings to make things progress. What’s interesting is that most of the time, we all need to combine the two schedules in our work life. his 2009 essay When you are in the maker’s schedule, a single meeting interruption could be a hard hit on your productivity. The maker’s schedule is most efficient when you are able to enter , a state of deep focus where your concentration is at its maximum and time seems to flow by without you noticing it. Going back to the flow after an interruption can ! Trying to mix your maker’s and manager’s schedule is always an indicator of inefficiency. the flow cost you up to 23 minutes The problem can also come from outside. Managers are more likely to disrupt the maker’s schedule due to the nature of their position. Because of hierarchy, managers also have the power to decide when meetings should happen. This power comes with great responsibility ( quote alert). Spiderman Interrupting the maker's schedule with a meeting is a big waste of their time. A good manager should recognize this and adopt meeting practices that let makers maximize their time. Managers should also realize that they could have fewer meetings and create more maker’s time for themselves. Paul Graham—a highly solicited person—keeps only the last hours of his day dedicated to meetings. The rest of the day is dedicated to getting things done. In modern companies, most of us need to adopt a dual schedule. So, how do you implement this in your daily work life? Recognize which type of meeting you are in In his bestseller, , Andy Grove (former chairman and CEO of Intel) describes two kinds of meetings: process-oriented and mission-oriented meetings. To make the most of your meetings, it’s important to recognize in which type of meeting you are. High Output Management Process-oriented meetings Process-oriented meetings aim at sharing knowledge and exchanging information. They usually take place on a regular basis. Classical examples of process-oriented meetings are one-on-one meetings, staff meetings, or project reviews. Most process-oriented meetings can be avoided (I will exclude the one-on-one from this affirmation). Take staff meetings, for example. It’s very common for companies to organize regular staff meetings to exchange statuses or project updates. The underlying goal is often to gain a bigger picture of how tasks are advancing in a team or company. It’s quite common nowadays to have daily standup meetings at the beginning of the day. The problem with these meetings is that most of the time, they’re an interruption for makers. Even if organized early, the meeting will always disrupt someone’s plan. And when you take this interruption company-wide, the loss of efficiency is very high. In general, process-oriented meetings can be replaced by digital updates. A written update has more value than one shared in a meeting. It can be read at any time, removes micromanagement, and builds trust across the company. Take daily or weekly updates, for instance. Apps like Basecamp or Range.co include features dedicated to eradicating daily status meetings. Every day, these tools invite your staff to enter an update. They can choose when to write it and avoid being interrupted by a meeting when they are in their maker’s schedule. The updates are shared with colleagues so they can also read them whenever they want, without being interrupted in the middle of a task. These systems keep all the benefits of a meeting while avoiding the drawbacks. Process-oriented meetings are not all bad, though. I mentioned the one-on-one as an exception because the main benefit of those meetings is the personal relationship they create between managers and team members. You can of course make the one-on-one more efficient with some techniques I will describe below, but trying to avoid the social interactions of these meetings would be an overkill. Mission-oriented meetings Mission-oriented meetings aim at solving a specific problem or producing a decision. Unlike process-oriented meetings, they are usually ad hoc and can’t be predicted in advance. The inefficiency of mission-oriented meetings comes from the fact that spontaneous decision-making involves many cognitive biases. The , for example, stipulates that when we’re in groups, we start to think the same as other people in the group. Another one, the , is very likely to happen in meetings and shows that we are more likely to listen to information that confirms our preconceptions. bandwagon bias confirmation bias The best way to remove cognitive biases from mission-oriented meetings is to go through a long preparation phase in written form. When a manager organizes a mission-oriented meeting, it’s better to not rush into it and to take the time to collect arguments, feedback, or questions beforehand. Creating a written discussion around the problem to solve it could lead to a better decision process. Rushing into a meeting as soon as a problem occurs is the best way to trigger cognitive biases. It also creates false urgency and disrupts other people’s schedules. Once all parties are well informed through preliminary documentation, a short mission-oriented meeting can happen and conclude the decision process. This is a good way to make sure that all parties agree to the decision, or at least commit to it. It could also be helpful to organize this type of meeting in case of conflicts or escalation in the decision process. Recognizing which type of meeting you are in will help you understand how to implement a better practice. In the case of process-oriented meetings, try replacing them with digital updates. For mission-oriented meetings, diligent documentation prepared in advance will help reduce the bias linked to decision-making. 7 meeting rules to live by Some meetings can’t be avoided. When this is the case, meetings should always follow the seven rules below: : A meeting without a goal is the best way to waste your time. Whether it’s a mission-oriented or a project-oriented meeting, all meetings should have a goal that is clear to all participants (for instance, a one-on-one meeting aims at reviewing the performance of an employee). Predefined goal : A meeting is not open-ended and must respect an allotted time. The shorter the allotted time is, the more efficient the meeting will be. If you plan a four-hour meeting, you can be sure that participants will find a way to fill in the time. You could reduce it to 30 minutes and have the same output if the meeting is well-prepared and includes all five other rules. Timeline : No agenda means no meeting! A meeting without agenda is just an excuse to lock people in a room (or Zoom call) for a specific period of time. Always start a meeting with an agenda of what will be discussed. Agenda : The meeting agenda should always be available in advance (at least 24 hours) so all participants can prepare their thoughts on the topic. The best practice is to engage in a written conversation before the meeting so that the issue can advance as far as possible without face-to-face interaction (and thus remove the problem of extrovert personalities taking over the discussion in meetings). Preparation : Each meeting must have an appointed leader to keep things moving along. If it’s a mission-oriented meeting, the leader should also be the one having the last word in case of indecision. Leader : Always appoint a scribe to take notes in a meeting. For fairness, the scribe should not always be the same person. Without notes, there is no trace of what’s been decided in the meeting. Notes help you in case of future memory lapses or to share the content of a meeting with people who didn’t attend. The scribe should also clean up the notes after the meeting to make them fully understandable to readers. Scribe : Jeff Bezos has a famous rule for meetings: no meeting should be so large that two pizzas can’t feed the whole group. Participants in a meeting should always bring value, otherwise, they can simply read the meeting notes and get an update on what’s been discussed. Adding more people to a meeting is a good way to slow down the decision process or just waste time that could be spent somewhere else. No more people than necessary Using this set of rules across your company will ensure that all your meetings are efficient. Still, you could find yourself being interrupted by well-organized and efficient meetings. On top of good organizational practices, healthy personal rules can also help your productivity. Reduce the time you spend in meetings Following the rules mentioned above should already reduce meetings to the most efficient ones. However, if meetings keep interrupting your maker’s schedule, they will still be a hindrance to your productivity. Below are some personal tips to help you regain your maker’s time. Written conversation is a huge time saver. Imagine the number of meetings that could be solved by a written (and detailed) conversation. I’m not talking about chaotic Slack threads, but real, in-depth details about projects, issues, and decisions to take. I’m regularly writing 200-300 updates I share with my team in our project management software. This lets me put my thoughts in order before I share them. These updates can be read at any time, so I don’t constantly interrupt my team with meetings. I would literally kill the productivity of my team if I constantly shared my thoughts in meetings instead of by writing. Write more, talk less: Calendar invitations are a good place to add metadata like the location, a call link, notes, and an agenda. This is especially true with people outside of your organization. Giving context and information to external parties is even more important, as they may have less knowledge on the topic of the meeting than your colleagues. Include metadata on calendar invite: We have all seen those people who start texting while they are in a meeting. In addition to being disrespectful, it also shows that the meeting is not relevant to them. To increase participants’ attention, you can introduce simple rules like having only one computer in the room or forbidding smartphones during meetings. It’s also important to stay focused on the agenda. Going off course is the best way to make a 30-minute meeting last hours. If the agenda needs further discussion, prepare a follow-up meeting instead of locking up your colleagues in a room for too long. Stay present and focus on the agenda: When you need to stay focused, the last thing you want is an interruption. However, some workplaces are more subject to this, and sometimes it’s your own responsibility to stop the interruptions from others. A simple method is to be transparent with your colleagues. For example, if you need long stretches of time to focus, communicate clearly with your team that you will not check emails or messages regularly. If you work in a crowded office with a lot of interruptions, you can also wear headphones to show that you are busy. Stop spontaneous interruptions: This is the most radical option, but often the best. Saying no to meetings is the best way to regain your maker’s time. You could, for instance, block your calendar with a “no meeting” event so that people can’t hijack your schedule. I regularly refuse meetings that don’t have a clear goal or agenda. Don’t forget, when you say yes to a meeting, you automatically say no to other tasks on your list. Say no to meetings: Like tasks, meetings can be batched together. This is especially useful for people with a hybrid maker’s/manager’s schedule. If all your meetings are batched on one or two afternoons per week, you totally free up the rest of your time for deep focus. Allocating a specific time window for your meetings also allows you to keep time spent in meetings to a decent level. For those who have a lot of spontaneous interruptions, you can also create “office hours” (like what professors do in universities). With office hours, you open a specific window of time in your calendar to answer questions. This is particularly helpful for people who need to regularly answer questions. Batch your meetings: Most calendar apps create one-hour events by default, but meetings don’t always have to be that long! Keep in mind that a 30-minute conversation can cover a lot of ground if the meeting is well-prepared. Ditch the one-hour slot and start having shorter meetings. It will also force participants to get to the point more rapidly. Don’t make it too long: Organizing a meeting can be complicated. It’s quite common to end up with a long email back and forth when trying to find a time that will fit all parties. One easy way to avoid this is to use tools like Calendly (it’s free). This app lets you share open time slots with external contacts. The organization process is totally automated, and you simply need to share a link for others to find a time that fits into your own agenda. Thank you, technology! Facilitate meetings with tools: The social benefits of meetings Each company is unique and has different needs when it comes to internal communication. Even though I’m convinced that most companies would benefit from reducing meetings to a strict minimum, I also acknowledge the social benefit of meetings. Sometimes, you have to let bad meetings slip through the gaps. In my company, we do one of these every week, voluntarily. Once a week, we organize a short all-hands meeting (as we are less than 10 people, this is still manageable). This meeting is dedicated to sharing two short weekly highlights, one professional and one personal. Even though this could be completely replaced by a written report (and we actually have one in parallel), the benefit of this meeting is to gather the team and have a relaxed discussion. The personal highlight also helps us bond, and quite often, laugh together. Sometimes, you have to recognize the benefit of a simple talk. But we can allow this meeting because we know that all other meetings are efficient. If you follow the advice in this post, you could easily reduce your time in meetings to a few hours per week, even if you are managing a team or a company. You don’t have to hate meetings if they are all relevant.

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As we step ahead, virtual events and virtual conferences are gaining momentum and becoming immensely popular. Hosting recurring day to day internal virtual meetings and conferences have become an integral part of businesses today. A sudden boost in web conferencing platforms has been witnessed on the internet that offers interactive & engaging online meeting solutions. Many organizations have moved their town hall meetings online to carry out business communication seamlessly. A virtual town hall is referred to as an online gathering of the remote employees of the organization for specific updates, announcements, or meetings. It is conducted by the CEO or senior management of the organization. When the organization holds its presence in different remote locations, connecting all the employees under one roof becomes nearly impossible with on-ground town hall meetings. Some fall out due to different working hours while some get stuck amid project deadlines or busy schedules resulting in missing out the meetings. As technology advances, online town hall meetings help corporations to connect all employees of the organization under one roof virtually. It enables them to make important announcements and conduct meetings while keeping all the employees in a loop. Virtual town halls overcome the hassle of gathering the employees in a room for important discussions. Selecting a virtual meeting platform that offers interactive virtual town hall meeting solutions is the best bet to rely on. It allows employees to tune in from their remote locations to be part of an online meeting. Virtual town hall meeting services allow you to reach employees who might miss attending a physical event. While hosting a virtual town hall meeting, privacy, and security are the top concerns of an organizer. Going with the key players of the online conferencing platform that offers user-friendly and comprehensive virtual town hall meeting services is the best bet. They keep the company’s privacy intact and restrict the authorization of third-party access. In this article, we have shared a brief guide about why you should opt for virtual town halls and how to host the one securely & successfully. To know more about Virtual town halls, read on: 1. High accessibility: Unlike in-person town hall meetings, virtual town hall meetings are highly accessible as it takes place over the internet. It allows attendees to tune in from remote locations wherever they are. They do not have to struggle to travel to attend a meeting. Attendees can join the virtual town halls using any device such as computers, tablets, mobiles, etc from any browser. Easy setup steps make it easy for attendees to register for the conference or meeting, thus making it even more accessible. 2. Makes it easier: Hosting a virtual town hall makes it easier for attendees and organizations to gather at one place virtually. All corporates do not hold expertise in conducting virtual conferences or meetings. Selecting a web conferencing platform is the right choice to host online town hall meetings. Interactive and engaging virtual meeting platforms carry the events right from planning to the execution stage. It makes it easy for organizers and attendees to gather online at one place with its capabilities. 3. A scalable way to expand the reach: Many organizations have a global employee base located in varied locations worldwide. Online town hall meetings make it easy to reach global employees. A versatile and brilliant virtual meeting platform helps in extending the reach, capabilities, and execution of your virtual town halls, and virtual conference seamlessly. The platform that has the feature of no audience capping and can host as many numbers of attendees as you want helps in expanding the reach in a scalable way. 4. Interactive Features and Traceability: Virtual meeting platforms offer interactive features that help in making your online town hall meetings interactive. It allows attendees to put across their point and interact with the presenter in real-time from their own desks. A presenter can simply moderate the meeting or the sessions. Apart from it, virtual town halls keep a complete track of all the attendees who registered, joined the meeting, and interacted. Organizing QA sessions, making important announcements, organizing LIVE polls, share screens, etc makes the online town hall meetings interesting, interactive, and engaging. 5. Offer on-demand video content: With an on-ground town hall meeting, if an employee once missed attending a meeting it's missed. It can result in the loss of important information for the employee. Virtual town hall meeting solutions allow employees to ask for an on-demand video to gain valuable insights and highlights of the meeting or important announcements. 6. Acquiring feedback becomes easy: Online town hall meetings make it easy for corporates to acquire employee feedback with ease. Feedback from employees definitely results in improving your next meetings or conferences. Virtual meeting platforms allow you to gather feedback from employees in a collected format. It helps in gaining the insights and opinions of your employees. 7. Overcomes the barrier of multitasking: Virtual town hall meetings overcome the barrier of multitasking as it will keep the employees engaged and focused. 8. A cost-effective measure: Virtual town hall meetings are far more cost-effective than in-person meetings. The cost of travel, event set up, venue, etc. all get resolved as it takes place online over the web. 9. Have complete access to analytics: Obtaining the analytics of attendees and meetings becomes easy when you host virtual town halls. A good web conferencing platform allows you to have full analytics to analyze the results and effectiveness of your town halls. After gaining the insights into the benefits of virtual town hall meetings, we now proceed to how to host a one. How to host a successful virtual town hall meeting? Select the right virtual meeting platform: To host an online town hall meeting, select a virtual meeting platform that offers interactive and engaging online meeting solutions. It enables you to engage attendees by organizing QA sessions, polls, surveys, and so on. .in is a good virtual event platform offers you all the possibilities and functionalities. Right from offering interactive features to seamless delivery to 24×7 customer support, a virtual meeting platform serves all. Dreamcast Keep time zone consideration in mind: While scheduling your virtual town hall meeting, keep the time zone of the employees in mind. Many organizations have a global presence. To connect with the global employees with an online virtual meeting, considering the time zone is a must. Schedule your online virtual meeting at a time that enables the maximum number of employees to tune in and do not miss out on important discussions or announcements. Send invites and pre-meeting updates to employees: Send invites and update to your employees beforehand via emails about the meeting so that they can get prepared. Illustrate the agenda of the meeting: Inform your attendees about the agenda of the virtual town hall meeting. Provide them with a schedule of virtual town halls as the communication gap will result in a lot of confusion. Inform the date, time, and purpose of the virtual meeting beforehand. Ask your attendees to post questions in advance: Asking your employees to post questions in advance is a brilliant idea. You can address the most relevant and important questions asked by employees in virtual town hall meetings. Test the technology before going live: Test the software and its functionalities before you go Live with your virtual town halls. Run a test to spot out any technical glitches and difficulty and sort it in advance. It helps in running out your online virtual meeting seamlessly without any constraint. Acknowledge your employees: A little acknowledgment makes your employees feel valued and appreciated. Acknowledge the presence of attendees and their time it helps in boosting their confidence and engagements during a meeting. Enhance networking possibilities: Develop a plan to engage employees even before the meeting starts. Work on pre-engagement activities to make your virtual town halls successful. You can develop engaging activities that take place before, during, and after the meeting. You can plan to organize polls, competitions, quizzes, or contests to engage attendees. Apart from it, organizing one-on-one meeting sessions is an outstanding way to engage attendees. Breakout sessions amid meetings help in igniting the spark and keep the environment light and engaging. Take feedback from attendees: Acquire feedback from attendees and presenters about town halls. It helps in gaining the valuable insights and opinions of the attendees. It helps in understanding which part of the meeting holds their interest and which they don't love at all. It helps in making meetings even more effective the next time. Measure the analytics and success of the virtual town halls: An online conferencing platform keeps a complete track of online town hall meetings and enables you to analyze the data.  It allows you to compare the data with your set expectations, thus making it easier to determine the success of the virtual event. If you have not yet planned to move your next town hall meetings online, now is the time to get started. Connect with your employees globally by hosting virtual town halls on the best web conferencing platforms.

A Guide to Virtual Town Hall Meetings

Video conferencing tools like Zoom, Skype, or WebEx along with Digital tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack are deeply embedded into the modern ways of working — even more during the lock-down era. And their role will only get more important. The adoption of the new ‘remote work’ model — which was accelerated by the lock-down — put video conferencing and online ‘team tools’ at the forefront of collaboration. People meet online, share their thoughts and ideas digitally, and build products and services remotely. Fortunately, there are great products in this category, which are continually enriched with new features, and improved with better experiences, and smarter functions. But there is always space for further improvement — especially if we consider the accelerating and of these collaboration technologies. adoption importance The following presents 10 ideas on how the overall remote collaboration experience could be improved — how it could become more effective, and in some cases, more ‘human’. Some of these ideas target an individual session (e.g. making a call or video conference more interactive and productive), while others aim to improve the overall team communication patterns and practices. 1. Meeting Feedback: How Good was the Meeting? How many slow, unprepared, and non-actionable meetings did you join this week? I don’t have statistics on this, but this seems to be the elephant in the (meeting) room: people tend to agree that there are too many meetings, often without sufficient preparation and in some cases without the right participants. Reflecting two decades of corporate experience, I could argue that 20–30% of meetings add zero (or negative) value to the business while a significant percentage of the ‘good’ ones, prove to be ill-prepared, with too many participants or not the right expertise in the room. And this applies to both physical meetings and their digital equivalents. A simple fix: Let the meeting organizer know. At the end of each call, there is usually a feedback prompt, like ‘How was the of the ’. There should be one more: quality call ‘How valuable was the meeting?’ Digital collaboration tools could embed effective feedback loops — micro surveys asking meeting participants to rate not the audio/video quality, but primarily the effectiveness of the meeting itself. Each participant could spend a few seconds, upon the completion of the session, to provide anonymous feedback — in the form or suggestions for improvement towards the organizer of the meeting. Participants could also use a simple agree/ disagree scale on how , , , , and the meeting was. Additionally, participants may make specific recommendations to the organizer, e.g. consider reducing the or the of the meeting. informative necessary prepared well-facilitated actionable duration recurrence Feedback would be then automatically aggregated by the system and communicated to the organizer, as a ‘ ’ — packaged with suggested actions and improvements, or related content and how-to guides. To ensure anonymity, the system could aggregate multiple instances of the same meeting and delay the communication of the score; or only recommend the evaluation for meetings with a certain, minimum number of participants. meeting effectiveness score This would help the meeting organizer to focus on setting up, preparing and hosting better meetings, by addressing the identified issues (for instance, by providing a structured agenda and related content upfront, by making the meeting faster, shorter, more interactive, and actionable). The meeting organizer would be able to analyze ‘meeting effectiveness’ scores against time ( ) or even against corporate baselines ( ). At a higher level, the organization would have valuable statistics on ‘meeting performance’ across a range of meeting types or divisions, groups, topics, number of participants, cadence, and more. Leaders would get insights answering questions like ‘ ’. are my meetings getting better? how good are my meetings versus similar ones across the company? what are the common characteristics of good meetings vs the low-performing ones?’, or ‘how can we learn and guide people to run better meetings? Considering that online meetings take a significant amount of time from the entire workforce, any improvement triggered by this ‘meeting feedback loop’, could have impressive outcomes and efficiencies in , , and even teams feel more energized with versus . cost (people use their time more efficiently) speed (decisions are made faster) agility (less routine meetings, more just-in-time decisions by the right teams) culture ( focused, fast, actionable discussions long, bureaucratic meetings with noise as the only outcome) 2. The ‘Standby Meeting Invite’: Ping Me if You Need Me A frequent issue of business meetings is that the participant’s list is not well thought through. There may be important people missing, or others that, although invited as ‘required’, they prove to be passive attendants — they do not provide or obtain any value out of the meeting. In certain cases, the organizers invite people ‘in case there are relevant questions that require their expertise’. The latter is a valid need, but it should be covered appropriately: when ‘ ’, ; — and if X or Y is indeed raised, the team can call me with a click of a button. I might be needed in a meeting in case X or Y is asked I don’t have to be in the meeting literally I just have to be standby By accepting an invite as ‘Standby’, the employee commits that he/she will be during the meeting — the time is blocked ( ). Hence, while the just-in-time participation is guaranteed, the ‘Standby Participant’ does not join the meeting; he/she keeps working on something else, and only joins the call if there is a specific ask: The organizer of the meeting knows that the ‘Standby Participant’ is a click away to join just-in-time and contribute with answers or expertise. available no other commitments will be made by the employee in this time slot When setting up a meeting, there should be ‘Required’, ‘Optional’, and ‘Standby’ or ‘On Call’ invites. A simple improvement that would make meetings more flexible while giving back time to people to do focus work. 3. The new ‘Front Page’ of the Company: What Else is Happening Across the Organization? Digital Collaboration tools become the primary surface for interacting with the organization: Modern digital collaboration systems are typically always-on — they evolve as the single place where the majority of employees go for scheduled or ad-hoc interactions with colleagues and teams. As a result, it is the best place to reflect the current activity of the organization — the corporate-wide business agenda. For example, collaboration tools could have a dynamic ‘home’ experience (the primary page or tab) that presents personalized summaries of what’s going on across the organization and what’s coming next. For instance, this could take the form of a smart synthesis of content being shared or public business events and activity, product releases, announcements, market signals, or new joiners; all these highly personalized at the team or the individual level. This may sound like yet another ‘social-network-like’ feed of events and posts. However, it is the exact opposite — a personalized ‘executive view’ of the current activity in the organization — a business activity briefing that is relevant to each employee — based on his/her profile and the implied or stated preferences. For example, a team member could passively discover related teams, plans, business ideas, and content created in the organization — all matching the role and aspiration of the specific user. This way, and the organization and the active business agenda becomes easier and relevant and it is naturally served as a general ‘context of collaboration’. discovering navigating 4. Company and Team Branding: The Team and its Purpose Working remotely weakens the identity of the company: the corporate symbols and references that are typically embedded into expensive corporate buildings and super-modern office space, are simply not visible anymore. The absence of the office dynamics, the communication patterns, and the energy levels of the corporate office widen the ‘branding’ gap. This ‘identity’ issue can be mitigated by integrating elements of corporate, product, or team branding in the collaboration tool itself. The entire should look as close to the team as possible — in terms of both messages and aesthetics: the mission/vision of the team, along with the visual language, logo, and branding elements must all be there to create a more familiar and friendly environment. digital collaboration surface The home page, the main tab, and other sections of the app experience could very well promote the , the and the of the organization. These can be also served via content references and updates across various experiences offered by the (the various apps and services for business communication and remote working). cultural values goals, innovation agenda collaboration surface Digital collaboration platforms can play an important role in diffusing strategic business messages and establishing the desired culture. It may reflect the unique identity of the company via a special visual language and dynamic, smart content experiences. They can empower the feeling of ‘one team’ and promote the strategic purpose — even when the entire organization is working remotely. Making Music 5. Meetings a Bit More Fun and Human: Add It may sound strange but probably it is not. Modern knowledge workers — and especially during the lock-down situation — find themselves spending entire days in back-to-back online meetings and video calls; some with people they have never met. Often there are awkward moments while ‘waiting for others to join’. What if meetings could with predefined music themes or even songs selected by the host (or by the team) and playing as background (‘broadcasted’ to all participants for the first minute or so)? There may also be other types of meetings where music may be a natural element — to set the pace and provide a special character — e.g. a celebration, a major business presentation online, etc. start A new range of experiences may be defined on top of this ‘simple’ addition. The meeting experience needs to be enhanced, and this can be done not only by better audio quality but also through sound effects and music themes. A Better Representation of a Remote Team: 6. An Always-on Connected ‘Team View’ While working remotely, the feeling of being ‘one team’ is significantly weakened. Team members do not see each other — unless they join the same calls: In a typical setting, members of the same team may not be ‘visible‘ to the team at the desired level — as they might have extended/ different agendas. Moreover, to get a feeling of ‘who is online now from my team’ and ‘doing what’, using the typical collaboration tools would require navigating and possibly searching through active threads, contacts, private chats, group discussions, etc. — an experience which is far from optimal. Imagine a single, always-on view of one’s team (formally or dynamically defined). This could be visualized as a grid of the top 10 most recent and frequent collaborators — members of the team. Members would be represented by informal, snapshot photos that are visible only within the team — as private team space. Members reflect their status, their latest communication with the team member viewing it, their availability for the rest of the day, and a quote on ‘what they are working on’ or ‘targeting to complete’ the next day or so. Instead of the standard profile photo, employees could take instant, more ‘casual’ snapshots visible only through this ‘Team View’ experience — without replacing their avatar photo. A new class of interactions can be defined on top of this ‘always-on team view’. For example, the entire team could go live with a click of a button; or team members could ping each other simply by using voice commands or by directly typing on the user’s card. Ideally, this should be displayed in a dedicated screen, in a team-branded container. This would organize the multiple (and frequently chaotic) communication threads, chats, and interactions into a natural, dynamic, team representation. A 7. Team Digital Assistant Teams get very busy from time to time; and in some cases, no single member of the team can have a clear view of what’s going on-topic threads, events, meetings, or other business activities. It is time for AI to come into play — a component able to analyze multiple signals and make meaningful recommendations to one or more members of the team. Recommendations could refer to anything from considering changing the duration or the recurrence of certain meetings (if for instance they always finish early and have limited participation); or trigger reminders to team members that haven’t accessed the pre-reads of a meeting; or following up with the participants of the meeting to collect feedback and remind them about the actions they took ownership for. From team birthdays to deadlines and from events to meetings to consider- the Digital Assistant could be realized as a smart chat-bot and Voice-enabled digital agent — a new, named member for the team. It could instantly respond to requests like ‘ ’ or ‘ ’ — in both examples the digital assistant would block people’s calendars and orchestrate a lightweight confirmation process. find me 15’ this week with the entire team ensure the team has 30% focus time this week With also a dose of embedded humor and smart interactions, the Team Assistant could boost the ways the team communicates and interacts. An 8. In-Call Digital Assistant There are many ways to improve the digital, in-call experience — both at the technical and at the interaction/ communication level. For instance, an In-Call Digital Assistant could automatically identify the participants that need to mute their microphones (e.g. when they are generating or allowing background noise while they are not speaking) and notify them to do so; or suggest to specific participants to turn off their video streams (e.g. when the system identifies limited bandwidth). A digital assistant could also be a very good timekeeper: When the meeting is approaching the scheduled end — the assistant may display a note or a countdown timer and possibly prompt participants to type comments and questions — to be included in the follow-up communication. The assistant may be smart enough to know how many of the participants have a ‘hard stop’ and notify the meeting organizer. Post-meeting, the digital assistant, in the form of a chatbot, could ask participants a series of questions (regarding the decisions or action points), organize the responses to help the organizer set up a follow-up plan. 9. Meeting Organizer’s Digital Assistant Organizing good meetings is essential for business. Even more when working remotely. A good meeting is one that has a defined purpose and context (input), the right processors (participants), and organized actional output (decisions, action points). A Digital Assistant may help significantly in preparing the context of the meeting, finding the right participants to include, and implementing a follow-up plan. For instance, as soon as a user starts typing the name and the agenda of the meeting, the digital assistant would automatically suggest that need to be considered, internal that must be relevant, and even public-domain that might be useful as a pre-read for the meeting. The Digital Assistant may also help by guiding the organizer to effectively set the context and make suggestions about the definition of the meeting (from to describing the and the desired of the event). people documents content naming purpose outcomes Post-call, the digital Assistant captures, processes and presents insights, feedback, and direct input provided by the participants and also makes recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness and the performance of future meetings. 10. Smart Office Space Navigation and Booking The future of work is hybrid: a significant percentage of the workforce of any digitized, modern organization will be working from home, but with frequent needs for face-to-face meetings. Companies of the future will maintain hub-offices with hot-desk arrangements and adaptable office spaces to meet just-in-time needs for physical collaboration. In other cases, a company may maintain long-term partnerships with companies offering co-location workspaces, to allow employees to find convenient office space, on-demand, and their proximity. This arrangement — owned office space and/or in partnership with collocation-space companies — should be reflected through the collaboration system. The Smart digital assistant should be able to find the most suitable office space to cover a certain business need — for example, when a team needs to host a face-to-face brainstorming session for an important matter. The assistant would take into consideration the proximity of all participants, the space availability across the network of offices, and the services required for the session (e.g. collaboration screens, digital equipment, and devices, etc.). It would also simplify the process to book the space and provide access to the team members — through personalized instructions and notifications. With the rapid digitization of the business world — accelerated by the global lock-down — collaboration tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams are becoming even more important: they evolve as the front face of the company — the digital surface where employees spend most of their time, collaborating with others, working with documents, discovering and sharing ideas. They represent the future of collaboration and personally, I expect to see impressive innovations at an accelerated pace. Cover photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

10 Features We Could Build to Improve Online Meeting & Collaboration Tools

I haven't worked from an office in about 4 months. The one time I stopped by at the end of March to pickup a testing device and a big monitor I met about 4 people out of ca. 70 in my department. The office is a ghost town, with tumbleweeds and all. We've all adjusted our lives significantly, we learned to cope as organization and as individuals. Now that we have somewhat adjusted and the memories of the before times are fading I think it's time to take inventory. How did we do? What did we learn? If we don't write it down now we won't remember. These are some observations I made about myself, my team and hearsay within the company – as always anecdotal evidence. From home we work just as effectively & efficiently 9am - 5:30pm never really mattered Most meetings were a waste of time Working at home is haaaaard Communication = Good Writing Presence != Control All of these were true before the pandemic. Being Effective & Efficient Let's have 3 hours of brainstorming meetings, every day, with the whole team! – said no one ever Creative work does not happen in meeting rooms. (Jason Fried goes even further and says ) “Work Doesn't Happen at Work” Well, some of it does, sometimes getting together in front of a whiteboard is magical. Recreating these moments in a remote work environment is really difficult, even with iPad, Apple Pencil and ZOOM. However that moment of grand ideas and stroke of genius, that happens once every quarter, at best. The rest of the time is spent on… you know, actually executing on the grand ideas. Creative execution work happens in bursts of individual work (→ ), interwoven with feedback cycles. This work happens outside of meetings, it is deep work, it requires quite & focus. This type of work fits the home office better than Rakuten Crimson House (Rakuten HQ in Tokyo) of the before times - if have a home office. Do you have a desk, a monitor and protection from children? flow I do a lot of deep work, I am lucky to have no kids around, a decent sized apartment with a desk and big monitor. I'm also more on the introvert end of the spectrum, which helps a lot. From my perspective this is the most productive and efficient time I spent working at Rakuten. Moreover I see no significant reduction in output in the teams that I work with. I hear the same from managers in other departments as well as from executives. However I only spoke with people in technical departments, I wonder how this affects the business-y work (which is the majority of the company). In the last 2 months I have seen several projects make significant progress, all crowned by the release of a waterfall project we have been working on for over a year now. In terms of delivery covid didn't matter, work from home didn't stop us. We had some new infrastructure problems (it's hard to restart the mac mini CI machine remotely), but no show stoppers. The 9-to-5 Rakuten believes in the strict business hours. At least at the start of the day. In the before times several departments had morning meetings (朝礼), with the whole department standing up and starting the day together. Others have morning stand-ups in their teams at 9am. And some are less anal about it. However, the general rule is: be at your desk at 9 am. Be there until (at least) 5:30 pm. Now that everyone working remotely people don't actually to be at their desk at 9 am, or finish work at 5:30 for that matter. If you have no meetings in the morning, who will notice if you start work by noon and work until 8:30 pm instead? I have a strong suspicion that many people are taking advantage of this flexibility that came as a side effect of working from home. I also suspect that nobody really notices and nobody is affected negatively by this. need Will Rakuten Leadership remember this after covid is “over”? I've got so many meeting hair toss In some circles having a lot of meeting is a status symbol. More meetings = more better. In the before times most meeting made me feel… ...and for good reason. . There's very few good reasons to have meetings: Strategic decision making. Sharing Information with immediate feedback (e.g. HR changes). Maybe sprint ceremonies like grooming, review and retrospectives. I'm not convinced that these need to be synchronous meetings… but let's give them the benefit of the doubt. So that leaves us with a short list of (potentially) good meetings: Meetings are toxic Strategic decision making Information sharing that requires immediate feedback/clarification Sprint ceremonies (maybe) On the other hand I can think of countless types of collaborative work that doesn't require a meeting, some example off the top of my head: Status updates Design/Code review Release Judgement Unidirectional Information sharing Effort estimations Meetings with more than 4 attendees Asakai (A weekly morning meeting with the whole company, a big deal at Rakuten) Thankfully I don't have to restrain myself in this time of 100% ZOOM meetings. When I find myself in a pointless, time-wasting meeting, I can blatantly face-palm without insulting others - thanks to the “turn off video” button 🖤. That's great for me, because I like to face palm, there's something liberating about the act of reenacting a meme, it is a little performance, just for yourself. I have this new face-palm-power at my disposal, yet I don't use it as much. It's almost like we have gotten better at scheduling & conducting meetings. At least better than in the before times. In particular the preparation & information sharing before & after the meeting has improved - I don't recall the last meeting without an agenda. I do recall many in the before times. Working on by yourself, at home is hard Working from home is becoming increasingly tough. I think I’m going to have to invest in a proper desk chair, a new desk and another apartment. The kids are driving me crazy. – some guy I work with We all expected problems. First we went through the honeymoon period of remote work: giddily enjoying no-pants-meetings, getting more sleep instead of commuting and feeling guilty-happy about skipping shower/grooming yet another day (“It's still ok-ish for another day. Tomorrow, I promise…” - lies we tell ourselves). Now some very real and unexpected problems have caught up with us. How's your back today? At the end of every day my lumbar spine feels like a dried up earthworm, scorched by the mid-summer sun. Barely anybody has a desk, chair and monitor setup that is meant for a full day of work (avid video gamers are a rare exception). It's an easy problem we can solve with money - but only in some cases. Many live in an apartment or houses that my mom would classify as “walk-in closet” - that's just a reality of Tokyo real estate. If I had to chose between a living room sofa and a desk I'd go for the sofa 9 out of 8 times. If you are a manager: how are the March, April & May timesheets of your reports? I've heard from several managers, some throw up their hands in despair “How did this guy work 20 hours in a single day?!". People work more hours at home than in the office, or at least they log more hours. The first answer on : When people start with remote work they often do, a lack of structure allows work hours to expand. The survey supports this, “unplugging after work” was the biggest struggle for remote workers. Quora to “Do remote workers work longer hours?" 2019 State of Remote Work In the remote work environment it is a lot harder for managers to protect their team from self-inflicted overwork. It's hard to know if people are taking the time to rest. In a recent ZOOM nomikai (= Japanese drinking party) on a Friday night one of my team members frowned and said “I have to jump into this meeting…” only to get a rebuke from his manager. Rightfully so - the issue was not urgent, most probably not even important. He didn't attend that meeting. Nobody died, no one got hurt, no money was lost. Now how do we protect that person from such self destructive behavior? 🤷‍♀️ Communication = Good Writing We learned this before. In collaborating with offices in India, USA and France - ad hoc meetings don't cut it. A mind map on a confluence page doesn't communicate requirements. A meeting without follow up communications or documents might as well not have happened at all as far as outcomes are concerned. So we knew all this all along, we just did not apply it to our work within the Tokyo office. As a result we tried to loosely couple teams in different geographies, along service or activity boundaries. Well defined, documented interfaces always worked better between offices. Integrating a well documented service is reasonable, no matter the geography of the owner team. A team that focuses on QA execution & automation or security audits - that works reasonably well. On the other end of the spectrum: A service that requires multiple meetings just to understand the onboarding process only works if we are in the same office. A service team with developers spread out across 4 different offices - that falls apart real quick without written communication. That's what we knew before the pandemic. Cut to the now - teams effectively have as many offices as they have team members. Synchronous meetings are possible, but not really effective for most activities. Ad hoc meetings are much less frequent, even though they are easier now that they don't require finding a room or free space anymore. Small teams (say 2 pizzas) still work pretty well, they communicate constantly throughout the day on Slack/Teams/Viber. On bigger teams the ad hoc conversations in the hallway or on the way to get coffee don't happen anymore. Requirements remain unclear, schedule updates are not shared, expectations don't align. The only solution is to . write it down One “problem” of writing it down is that it is a forcing function. It forces you to commit your thoughts & ideas to “paper”. If you can't write it down you don't understand what you are trying to say - so forcing yourself to write it down will help not just the team, it will help you! However this is a weak spot in our organizational skillset, it is not part of the culture. Good written communication is necessary and recognized by tech teams and managers. For example it's a key part in how I argued my way into good evaluations on the technical expert career path. With a handful of high quality, highly technical documents that you authored it is easy to argue that you are an expert. Yet we don't foster that skill enough. Large portions of Rakuten Tech are unable to write technical documentation that's usable by other teams, or to write requirements documents that communicate who wants what and why to the developers. In 2002 Jeff Bezos announced to this his employees that every team will expose their functionality and data as a service. In product quality . An impactful decree that shaped the company culture for decades (see ). this blog post “Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. Thank you; have a nice day!” – Jeff Bezos, 2002 Rakuten would not be able to do this now. Our technical writing literacy is just not there yet (to be fair: Amazon's skills were probably not there in 2002 as well). With 100% remote work in Rakuten Tech we need to improve this. Presence != Control Rakuten is a large company with very diverse teams and cultures. In my time here I have been in 3 different departments (ignoring reorganizations): one more traditionally Japanese, one very much shaped by the cash-cow-e-commerce mindset and one more western and innovation oriented. I saw different management theories/philosophies in action and hear tidbits from coworkers in other departments. Broadly speaking I see 2 schools of thought: First the : people who believe that tight control, checking in regularly and physical presence are necessary for high productivity (one might say that they don't trust employees). The theory goes back to the industrial age when production was monotonous & repetitive, humans were really only necessary because we didn't have the technology to automate those tasks. In those days micro-management really improved productivity of a factory. The second is which focuses on the empowerment of individuals on the team in order to perform with maximum effectiveness and efficiency. This approach is less about control and more about enablement, managers check in to ask how they can resolve problems for the team, not to constantly get status reports. I have worked under both types, in my experience scientific management is a mismatch for the creative knowledge work we do . Yet scientific management still seems to have quite the following (unfortunately). scientific management servant leadership This manifests in some managers requiring their teams be on a ZOOM call all day long - just so the managers can see them. This is so dystopian, it's not even funny anymore. Other companies do similar things , on twitter you find reports of a and . bank taking screenshots & logging keystrokes other companies selling spyware to employers This is all very sad. I hear about it less and less, managers seem to come around (or teams don't complain about it anymore…). Most of us already knew that presence is not control and we are getting over that old cognitive illusion, one pandemic at a time. Where do we go from here? So we have learned (some of us are maybe still learning) that… We are just as effective working remotely… …even if we work on a slightly different schedule. We never needed all those meetings - good riddance I say! We need better home office space. We need to stop exploiting ourselves and/or help coworkers to stop as well. We need to work on our writing skills. Presence only gave us the illusion of control. Let's grow up and become real managers! Let's see where this takes us. We still don't know for how long this work-from home situation will last, but I already told my managers and team that I won't be going back to the office. We'll I'll go occasionally, I do miss being with the team too. Just sometimes though 😜. My intention in writing this down is to look back in 6-12 months and see what stuck around and what changed. I hope Rakuten remembers these lessons and all the other ones I did not mention.

Working At A Tech Company During A Global Pandemic

Bitcoin’s Immaculate Conception with Dan Held

By Molly Messenger, Chief of Staff, Udemy If you’ve been tasked with leading your first , you might think all those hours sitting in meetings as an attendee have adequately prepared you. But were they all good meetings? Being the one in the driver’s seat brings additional responsibilities and requires a different mindset to get the results you want. meeting First, think about the “bad” meetings you sat through. I’m guessing they were disorganized and unfocused. Maybe you felt like there was no point to the meeting or wondered why you were there. Those meeting leaders failed to set clear expectations, control the discussion, and guide it to a productive conclusion. You don’t want to be that person, right? At Udemy, we took a hard look at our meeting culture and launched an initiative to provide a framework that would help people decide when an in-person meeting is truly needed and how to make the most of that time. I think every first-time meeting leader would be well-served to take this advice to heart. As a busy professional, you may be tempted to blow off preparation and tell yourself you already know what you want to get done. Poorly planned meetings, however, ultimately lead to more meetings that try to accomplish what was missed the first time around. It’s worth thinking through why you’re having a meeting and, perhaps most important, what needs to happen after it. Our framework asks that meeting leaders clearly define the purpose of their meeting, share a detailed agenda, and communicate the desired outcome — in advance — to establish a shared understanding right from the start. As a novice meeting leader, you might be inclined to invite certain people “just in case,” but this can waste valuable time for everyone. It might make more sense to assign an attendee to communicate up the chain afterward, than to have someone sit in a room for 30 minutes to weigh in on a decision that will take 30 seconds. You should also plan how much time you’ll spend on each agenda item, so you don’t rush through important topics. Watch the clock (or, better yet, assign a timekeeper) to ensure you cover everything. If it’s your first time running a meeting, you might just focus on getting through your agenda. But your job as meeting leader is to facilitate productive dialog, not merely to check items off a list. Don’t only look only at your presentation deck; keep an eye on the rest of the room too. by soliciting diverse ideas. For this to happen, your culture needs to be built around a commitment to psychological safety, so people feel like they can disagree and challenge each other without judgment or retribution. Notice if certain attendees dominate the conversation or cut others off. Establish a “step up/step back” norm that encourages people who are quiet to speak up, while those who tend to dominate conversation are asked to make room for others. On a tactical level, watch out for attendees busy on their phones and laptops instead of paying attention to the discussion. Plenty of meetings fail simply because people weren’t listening and offering input when the team needed it. It’s okay to politely ask everyone to close their devices. The most important thing to do when leading your first meeting is to learn from the experience. Ask for feedback from the team. At the meeting’s conclusion, summarize what you talked about and check that you met your objectives, have assigned action items, and have a clear plan for owners and deadlines. If your office has a culture of meeting overload, there will always be one or more people who dash from the room because they have another meeting starting in two minutes. This is why it’s important to watch the clock and make sure you’ve covered off on important discussion topics as well as project needs that will keep you on track. No one should leave the room without a full understanding of what was decided, what their responsibilities are, and when they’re expected to deliver. Don’t Wing It Be Aware of Group Dynamics Successful teams make better decisions Nail your Finish management Originally published at www.hr.com .

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