Think donuts and coffee are enough to engage your meeting attendees? Think again. Today, there’s a new way to hold a meeting—one that’s gaining new interest every day.

It’s called the “flipped meeting,” and the way you do it is simple. Instead of sharing information presentation-style during the gathering, you share the presentation ahead of time, then use the meeting time for employee input and discussion.

It’s a teaching style pioneered by high schools, colleges, and even primary schools for the past several years under the name of “the flipped classroom”—and it’s quickly making its way to the world of business.

In Flipping Your Faculty Meetings, Nancy Caramanico, an advisor to school faculties, delves into the details—and her thoughts apply outside the realm of education as well.

“Create a 10-15 minute video of agenda items,” she writes. “This video can include items and ideas that will be discussed during the faculty meeting. You can distribute the video to the faculty in advance. At the meeting, faculty teams can explore creative ways to implement ideas in their school.”

Meanwhile, in Flip That Meeting to Improve Outcomes, Engagement and Satisfaction, Les Wallace suggests that companies expand their idea of what the term includes.

“Professional meetings and conventions are not exempted. Make your learning events, workshops, and seminars more dynamic and powerful. Provide ample advanced information electronically including video “lecturettes”, articles, and data summaries. Tell people to come prepared to apply what they’ve digested in discussion and case studies. The teacher now becomes a learning coach, not a lecturer. Participants become active in their own learning. This is how corporate education and training should be flipped!”

What’s more, some of the world’s most innovative companies are taking notice.

At Amazon and LinkedIn, the business meeting isn’t what it used to be. Taking a cue from forward-thinking high schools and universities, companies like these have taken this time-honored gathering and turned it on its head.

Best of all, it’s a new format that any organization can adopt overnight — all it requires is a simple, fundamental change in the expectations we have for our meetings.

Here’s how flipped meetings work:

1. Ahead of your meeting, record a quick rundown of your meeting information and the action items needed.
2. Share that recording with your meeting attendees a day or so before the scheduled session.
3. When attendees gather for the meeting, skip the deck and get right to the discussion: Q and A, brainstorming, decision making — whatever input gathering method best fits the situation.

 

Ready to start flipping your meetings?

The way we do meetings today is broken. Meetings at most organizations are PowerPoint-driven lectures, structured to offer little opportunity to get real work done and real decisions made.

But there is an alternative. Our flipped meeting how-to handbook includes a guide to developing a flipped meeting culture in your organization, including:

• Pre-meeting communication and information sharing needs
• In-meeting group management best practices
• Ideas for using video to make flipped meetings even more efficient

Flipping your meetings can help you win back time wasted in meetings, ensure that every meeting you attend is productive, and empower your teams to collaboratively make smarter, timelier decisions.

Ready to get more out of your meetings? Download our free guide, Turn Your Meeting On Its Head: A guide to flipped meetings today.