ROTI: evaluate the effectiveness of the time spent together in meetings

A template to learn how to organize effective meetings

ROTI comes from the acronym "Return On Time Invested". With this template, you can get feedback from participants about whether a meeting or workshop that has just taken place was worthwhile or not.

Did the team learn anything from this work session? Was their time wasted or invested? Was it a successful, effective meeting? The team rates the previous session, whether it took place remotely or in person. Remote working is no obstacle to feedback!  Everyone explains their assessment in real time via Klaxoon Board, and can suggest areas of improvement.

This valuable feedback optimizes upcoming meeting content, promotes productive ‏‏‏‏‏‏‏teamwork and enables you to lead a meeting or workshop in the way that suits your team best.

The benefits of ROTI: learn how to collect feedback to improve your next meetings

Communicating and running a meeting effectively is a skill that can be learned. No more weekly meetings spent looking at your emails while the team leader keeps on talking, or workshops with so little interaction that you hardly remember anything. With the ROTI template, stop wasting time needlessly in meetings and organize productive meetings that add real value.

As team members can assess the form and content of the meeting when it comes to an end, this means their feedback is immediate, and their opinions are expressed in real time. The option to make comments and suggestions for improvement anonymously lets people speak up more than at a round table discussion or a meeting with your manager. Everyone has their say, in person or remotely via the whiteboard, and the feedback is comprehensive and seamless.

These few minutes at the end of a session will save you time in the long run by avoiding falling into the same pitfalls, and aiming at organizing successful meetings. This is why good project management should include the ROTI template at the end of a meeting, especially when you test new meeting formats (project sync-ups, team check-ins etc.).

Understand and run a successful meeting with the ROTI template

Once your ROTI template is launched, first fill in the date and topic of the session of the day at the top of the whiteboard. In Options, fill in the first names of the team members in Dimensions, and then invite your team.

Start a three-minute timer (located at the top) and ask everyone to send an idea to the column that corresponds to what they thought of the previous meeting. Remember to follow the suggested color code and encourage participants to develop their ideas in a few words. Everyone is free to choose whether to put their first name in Dimensions for their idea, or leave their contribution anonymous.

As a team, review all the submitted ideas, discuss them and let everyone explain their point! Focus on the first two columns ("Useless" and "Below Average") to get it right the next time. And it’s also really important to remember what works well, too!

In the rectangle containing the question mark, send suggestions for improvement resulting from these discussions and organize them (delete duplicates and enlarge ideas that appear several times, etc.). Then, ask everyone to like the most compelling ideas so that they can be implemented for your next workshop or meeting!