Teamwork needs work. Flowdock attempts to minimize the amount of that work. The promise is: Keep your team up-to-date with no effort.
That means Flowdock reduces the need for meetings. In a good team, members know what the others are doing at all times. A good team does not constantly feel the need to have meetings.
When done right, an efficient meeting can be useful. There are a couple of things in specific that are required for a good meeting. Flowdock can give you them.
The Agenda
With Flowdock, you can collect the agenda just like you collect any list on Flowdock. We use the #agenda tag to gather things we need to go through during our weekly “administrative” meeting. Just like I showed you in my last post about handling todo lists in Flowdock, the lists form naturally from the path of the conversation.
Flowser gives us the complete agenda. We just tick out the #agenda tag off the items as we go through them.
On meeting day, there are rarely many additions or other surprises from attendees who “haven’t seen the agenda”, since on any given moment
- anybody can contribute to the agenda
- the agenda is right there for everyone to see
Track and stay organized
The second most important thing in a great meeting is efficient tracking of action points (or todos) and when needed, separate note taking.
We track todos the same way in and outside of meetings. We often go through the todos in these meetings to make sure they are progressing and to address any potential problems.
We don’t keep separate notes about these meetings. We keep notes all the time by tagging things in Flowdock. A meeting isn’t a special opportunity to be organized for a half an hour. With Flowdock, staying organized all the time is as easy as chat.
