While I really dislike meetings in general, they are necessary on occasion. Sometimes, the most productive — and efficient — way to figure a project out can be to get everyone in the room for a bit and hash out details rather than sending 1 million emails for weeks.

But have you ever left a meeting thinking everything was in hand, only to find out that two of the project tasks were totally missed, and two other tasks were on the lists of two different people, so they got done twice?

Not a recipe for an effective or efficient team, is it?

Before you leave

Here’s the last thing you should be doing before you leave a meeting: Ask every person to tell the group what tasks they’re now responsible for as a result of the meeting.

This process will help you find those items that got missed, or any tasks that have been duplicated.

This step will only add five minutes to the meeting, but will save you loads of time over the project, and will yield huge rewards in ongoing team productivity.

photo credit: minivan1411 cc