One of the really cool features of PDCA Complete is the meetings module.
You can create meeting series and chain meetings together. This makes looking at previous actions really simple. Just click the clock icon and you can see all the actions from all of the prior meetings in the series.
Clicking on the ‘live’ filter then shows you which actions are still open. This is a great way to open up a meeting, by reviewing previous meeting actions.
Long running series method
But, what do you do when the meeting series spans years?
Option 1 is to link every meeting to the same series and not worry about it. We have a client that has run their management meetings for the past two years in PDCA Complete and this works fine.
Option 2 is to create a new meeting series covering a period of time. Using the previous example this could be ‘Management Meetings 2024’. The year could change every January 1st and this would keep the series neatly together.
A completely different approach
Another way to look at this is to have meeting records that spans a period of time. This is especially useful if the meetings don’t produce lots and lots of actions.
An example of this is another user of ours. They have an IT improvement meeting that takes place once a fortnight. There is a lot of show and tell going on in the meeting but typically they add between three and eight actions per meeting. They link their meetings together in a series, as above, but the meeting record spans a quarter of the year.
This works well for them. They can still chain open actions through the entire series but keep their meeting records to a minimum.
What will work best for you?
We’ve built PDCA Complete so that you can use it in a versatile manner. Hopefully this short article has given you some ideas on how you can chain your meetings together to save time in your organization.
One of the big benefits with our meetings module is saving time. You can capture the decisions and actions in one fell swoop. The team get their actions instantaneously via their My Tasks page. No more writing up minutes afterwards and distributing the actions.
If you are interested in estimating how much time and money you can save from using this approach to capturing meeting minutes, we’ve made a savings calculator. You can access the calculator here.
Free account
We offer a free account, so if you haven’t started using PDCA Complete, you can get started here.
The free account allows you to add two of your colleagues and start using the software. When you are ready to expand your team within PDCA Complete, you can simply upgrade your account.
