Central Matters

HelpDesk for the Central Office Administrator

collaboration

2 Productivity and Collaboration Tips

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Easy agendas and note-taking for meetings

photo of two people collaborating
Photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

Increase your productivity and collaboration

If you are a typical central office administrator, you probably find yourself in meetings quite often.  How can you increase productivity and collaboration at your meetings?  

I am sharing with you two ways that I have found to boost productivity and collaboration for teams.

If you work in a small district, you might find that your day is mostly meetings since your duties probably cover many departments.  

I long for a day with no meetings.  It is difficult to imagine a day where I don’t have to rely on my calendar to get me to the next meeting on time.  

(I was about to type, “It is difficult to imagine a day when I can actually work instead of attend meetings.”  The problem with that is that the meeting is the work.  Meetings should be productive and move the district forward.  But that’s another article entirely.)

Here are my top 2 methods for boosting productivity and collaboration at meetings.

1. Collaborative Agenda and Note-taking Document (2 for 1 on this one!)

Two heads are better than one, right?  What about the minds of all your team members?  This is what method 1 involves.

Many districts utilize some type of online tools that lend themselves to collaboration.  For example, some districts have adopted Google’s G Suite; others might use Office 365.  

Whatever your platform, if you are not already doing so, use it to build agendas and note-taking documents.  This is especially helpful when you have recurring meetings with the same group of people.  

How to do this

Create your agenda in the online document, such as Google Docs, making sure to leave space for note-taking.  I like to use a two column table for this. Share it with all participants, asking them to bring their device (e.g., laptop, tablet) to the meeting and take notes in the document.

By having everyone taking notes, each person has a rich record of the meeting.  No more “what did Roxane say about X at our last meeting?” What Roxane – and everyone else – said will be captured in the collaborative document.

The hard part?  

Getting the few people who don’t always bring a device with them to meetings to start bringing them and adding their notes. 

The next step?  

Once you have everyone comfortable with collaborative note-taking, you can ask them to help you build a collaborative agenda for the meeting.  

You will need to start it and share it with the meeting participants early enough to allow them time to add items before the meeting.  Doing so will boost the productivity and collaboration for everyone at the meeting.

The beauty of building collaborative agendas is that participants add items to an agenda that are mostly for information purposes.  

But they add the information they need to share, people read it before the meeting starts, and so no time is used DURING the meeting for information sharing.

This means that your meeting time is actually used for working – that is, moving your district forward. For example, without information-sharing taking up all the meeting time, perhaps your team can work on root cause analysis or discuss next action steps in your realizing your strategic plan.

Marvelous.

2.One Document vs. Multiple Documents

I have used Google Drive – both personally and professionally – for a long time.  It can get cluttered up, even when you use folders to organize all your ‘stuff.’

Someone in my district had asked me how to accomplish a task in Google sheets.  I had been mulling over possible solutions for a couple of days, but with no luck.

During this time, I attended a conference and ran into a colleague from Mooresville Graded School District (MGSD), Dr. Scott Smith.  As a technology expert, I knew Scott would be able to help.

Turns out, Sheets didn’t have the capability to do what we wanted it to do.  But Scott did show me another way to accomplish our goal.

That’s what I am sharing with you here.

Notes, Notes

When I have a team that I meet with regularly, we always have an agenda (see #1 above) and notes.  Over the course of a year, all those separate documents get cumbersome.

Scott showed me how to use ONE – yes, just one – document to contain all the agendas and notes for the team, BUT make it easy to quickly locate just the notes I (or any of my team members) need.

Focus on Goals

I loved the way Scott’s team had started their document with their district’s vision and mission.  For one of my teams, I included our district’s vision and mission statements, along with our strategic priorities.  

For other teams, I used different strategic documents and “why” statements that guide our work.  

So how does it look and work?

It’s All in the Table

In addition to the statements mentioned above, I also build in a table with two rows, two columns on the first page.  

The first column contains the date of the current meeting.  The column on the right eventually contains the dates of all the previous meetings.

The first page contains just the statements and the small table with dates.  

The second page begins the collaborative agenda and notes.  I type in the date and team name, then on the next line, I insert another two column table for my agenda.  

I add at least 10-11 rows, knowing that I (or any member of the team) can add more if it becomes necessary during the course of the meeting.

Side-note:  I used this two column note-taking strategy when I was completing my doctorate.  For more on what that experience was like check out my two posts The Realities of Being a Doctoral Student and Should You Start a Doctoral Program.

Beautiful Bookmarks

The key to this first page is to put a bookmark beside the date of the meeting.  

Once you have created the bookmark, go back to your first page, and type in the date of the meeting in the current meeting agenda cell.  Link that date to the bookmark that you created on the second page.  

If this is your first meeting of the year, you might be wondering how is this helpful.  

2 ways to increase productivity and collaboration at meetings

Good question.

Where this design becomes truly helpful is after you have a few meetings under your belt.  

With each successive meeting, you will add another page to the end of your document and build a collaborative agenda on it.  That is, you will add the date and insert a two column table.  

Bookmark the meeting date.  Then return to page one, copy and paste the last meeting date (which in the left column, Current Meeting) into the right column, Previous Meetings.  Your link should also copy and paste.  

Next type your current meeting date in the left column and link it to the new bookmark you created.  

If you keep adding the agendas, bookmarks, and links to the document over the year (or quarter, or month), then you will create one document that houses all the meeting notes AND is easily searchable.  

The collaborative note-taking document creates a running record for your team’s work.

No more going through various folders and individual files looking for information shared in a meeting. 

Your productivity increases because you are no longer searching endlessly for notes.  And because of the collaboration, you have ALL the notes.

With the bookmarked Doc, if you know the information was shared in the August meeting, then you only need to click the link for the August meeting to find what you need.

It is a thing of beauty – just like my Drive, whose folders are less cluttered with files.  

Bonus tip:  In Google Docs, you can assign tasks to individuals using the Comment function and their email address.  The task is automatically emailed to the individual.  

Recap

Just remember – to increase productivity and to encourage more collaboration during meetings:

  • Develop a collaborative and integrated agenda and note document.
  • Make it a running record of all your meetings or work sessions.
  • Utilize bookmarks 

If you would like more help on setting up this type of collaborative agenda and note-taking document, I have created a tutorial, complete with numerous screen shots.  The tutorial will guide you through each step, so that you can increase your team’s productivity and collaboration.  To access it and all the cool things in the Central Matters Resource Library, click here.

College and Career Readiness with AVID

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Sometimes for my day job, I am able to visit other schools and districts. This is usually an enjoyable experience, and one from which I learn a great deal.  The teachers and administrators in these host districts typically relish the opportunity to show off a new program or provide an opportunity for their students to shine.  

Jeff_OldTruck
Old truck on early spring day.

A few times I have visited schools because I served as a member of a district’s accreditation review team.  Most of the time, however, I visit to observe how a school or district has implemented a new program or initiative.

About a year ago, I visited two schools in Anderson, SC.  Each school was an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) school, meaning that they hold students to high standards and provide support and resources to help them achieve those standards.

Often, students in AVID programs often do not fit the typical profile of a college-bound student.

 

Many times they are the first in their families to attend college. Many times AVID students come from the “academic middle.”  

So what did I see when visited these classrooms in the AVID schools?  First, I saw students engaged in AVID tutorials.  Students completed a handout noting a point of confusion from their current studies.  Small groups formed based on the topics identified through the point of confusion handout.  Nothing too unusual so far.

Then the magic began.  Students presented their points of confusion to the other members of their group.  The group worked through each point, providing notes and hints, and adding clarity for the student presenter.  

So what?  Well, students were fully engaged with academic content that mattered to them.  This engagement occurred when the student presented his or her point of confusion and when the student was providing support for another student’s point of confusion.  Teachers long for students to think critically about academic content, and AVID provides a way for students take their class discussions to a higher level.

During the morning, my team visited teachers and students in a high school.  The students involved in the tutorials were freshmen and sophomores.  We also spoke to seniors who enthused about the benefits of the program.  My colleague and I asked the seniors what they would suggest we tell a rising freshmen we wanted to recruit into an AVID program.  They quickly articulated several recruitment points.

In the afternoon, we visited a middle school.  Admittedly, I was not expecting to see the same level of engagement during the tutorials.  I was delighted to discover sixth grade students involved in the tutorials with a high level of engagement as well.  

Is AVID for every student?  No.  Should every school have an AVID program?  Perhaps.  I know that I liked what I saw students and teachers doing at the schools that I visited.