• Communications

Your Next Steps Email Is A Waste Of Time

Walk in on the last 2 minutes of any corporate meeting and you’re likely to hear someone volunteer – or be volunteered – to send a follow-up email summarizing decisions, next steps, and action items resulting from the minutes beforehand.

We all know the format – one part task list, one part meeting minutes, all wrapped up in a pages-long email that takes about as long to write as the actual meeting.

And what’s worse – we’re sending and receiving more of them every year.

As more and more efficiency experts recommend such formal summaries as a tool to keep teams on track – and as more and more organizational teams make the switch to agile and Scrum-oriented operations with daily update meetings – a considerable part of our time spent in meetings is now dedicated just to reading and writing meeting summaries!

What’s a better option? A video recap.

 

A video recap is a simple way to share important next steps after a meeting in less than the time it takes to write up detailed memos. Here’s how:

  1. Encourage your team to take just 5 minutes with a laptop webcam or smartphone to record a brief rundown of the discussion, decisions, and next steps, as well as any additional details (like whiteboard notes) they may want to capture
  2. Once they’ve finished, have them upload the video to your internal YouTube
  3. Share the link with your team, and let everyone get back to work

Panopto’s video platform makes sharing videos across your organization easy. Every video recorded with Panopto is automatically uploaded to your secure video library and made ready to share in a matter of moments.

Best of all, Panopto’s Smart Search technology lets your team search inside the actual content of all your videos for any word spoken, any word shown on screen (even on computer screens or whiteboard notes), and any word included in the video metadata, and instantly fast-forward right to the relevant moment. Just search “next steps” and Panopto will not only find your video, but take you right to that moment so you can get the recap for yourself.

Flip Your Meeting Format - Panopto Video Platform

You’ll be surprised just how much time a 5-minute video will save you in place of the standard email write up.

Need more ideas for using video to improve your meetings?

Check out our best practice guide to doing more—in less time—by flipping your meetings, Turn Your Meeting on Its Head.

Download your free copy today!