Lucid Meetings Blog

About iWMS

iWMS is an international HighJump software service provider.

Since its inception in South Africa 2009, the company has extended its operations into India, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

This global expansion allows iWMS to access the best global resources while also expanding their market share. The combination allows them to blend teams and make sure the right level of experience is available for their customers.

iWMS CEO, Richard Evans, noticed that his internal and customer meetings were going well, but he thought they could use a bit more structure.

He decided to look for a way to improve the company’s management meetings, and decided that it was important to document decisions, formally track action items, and follow up after meetings to make sure everyone was sticking to commitments.

Miawpukek Mi’kamawey Mawi’omi is a First Nation Reserve located at the mouth of the Conne River on the south coast of the island of Newfoundland.

Over the years the community has seen a steady growth in government, social reforms, health, education, economic development, culture and traditions.

As Systems Analyst and coordinator of a number of regular meetings, René Jeddore recognized a need to build more efficiency into their everyday operations in order to maintain the Council's progress.

The Council's reliance on paper processes led René to search for a new solution that included a way to digitize the Council's records. 

Lisette Sutherland runs Collaboration Superpowers, a workshop facilitation business, from her remote office in the Netherlands.

Professional facilitators from all over the world license her materials to teach her Work Together Anywhere Workshop, both online and in person.

When preparing for the workshop, Lisette spends a few hours setting up each section by creating an agenda, uploading documents, and setting up multiple software platforms for her participants.

However, because she uses Lucid for the online meeting segment, she’s able to leverage a pre-defined meeting template, automating both setup and follow through—saving her a minimum of thirty minutes in preparation time.

Meeting agenda templates also allow new facilitators to get up and running quickly, making her licensing business more scalable.

Over the course of a year, this huge time savings allows her to focus on improving the workshop curriculum and managing high-level business activities.

After more than 25 years of facilitating meetings and training groups, Beatrice Briggs, founder and director of the International Institute for Facilitation and Change, believes she's seen almost every group facilitation situation imaginable.

Yet, she continues to receive emails from colleagues that surprise her.

Numerous facilitators around the world teach managers and teams about the benefits of better meetings, yet few leaders actually understand why it's so important.

Heads of industry continue to focus on cash flow, operations, and reducing waste while ignoring the time, energy and money squandered in unproductive meetings.

Inspired by the many stories she's heard over the years, "No More Boring Meetings" aims to encourage teams and managers to reap the great benefits offered from their time meeting together.

Creating a strategic plan for your business is a critical task for the leadership of every company.

If you don’t decide where you’re headed, you will lead aimlessly. People will follow your direction, but they won’t have context, insight into to your actions, or an understanding of how they can best contribute.

Any planning requires time and focused attention, yet with a few simple rules, building a strategic plan can be accomplished with less effort than most people think.

Best of all, once you create the plan, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner. Everyone in your organization can move in the same direction toward a common set of goals.

Mapping Your Strategic Plan

Building a strategic plan is like creating a map. It has directions for how an organization will accomplish any given strategy. The plan (map) explains where a company is going and the methods (roads) people will take to get there.

When your team decides to come together and build the plan, be sure to include all relevant stakeholders in the process. Without them, you’ll have less commitment to the final outcome.

Why Plan?

Many leaders understand the value of planning, but neglect to go through with it for a myriad of reasons. Time constraints, knowledge of the process, or perceived high cost can all be obstacles to executing.

Here are 5 great reasons to get your team together to create a strategic plan as soon as possible:

1. You get to set priorities
   Provide clarity by letting your team know the most important initiatives for the organization.
2. You get buy-in on company direction
   If everyone contributes to the process, they'll be more supportive of the outcomes.
3. Your team will have alignment
   When your team has a mutual understanding of and agreement on the company's goals, they'll work together more effectively.
4. You can simplify what you'll work on
   Once you limit yourself to a set of specific goals, you can be liberated to work on just those goals.
5. As a leader, you can communicate your vision
   Once you document your company's vision, not only can you clear your head of thinking about it, but everyone around you (employees, vendors, leadership) can contribute to achieving the vision sooner.

We recently co-hosted a Q&A webinar with Paul Axtell, and didn’t know exactly what to expect.

He gave such a great presentation – useful tidbits about meetings, great conversations, and life in general - that we decided we owed it to our audience to share.

Watch the recording, or read below for excerpts and the transcript from the webinar.

On the TV show The Profit, Marcus Lemonis teaches that “people, process and product” are the three keys to a successful business. As Chairman and CEO of Camping World and Good Sam Enterprises, he leads close to 6,000 employees in over 100 cities across the US. I’ll take that as a credible source.

There are numerous processes out there to run a business, manage people, and develop products, yet almost all of them are geared toward in-person communication.

What happens when your team is distributed, and rarely sees each other in person?

Remote work is a reality in companies everywhere - whether employees are on a different floor, co-located in offices across multiple cities, or in a remote home office location working solo.

We've published a wealth of information on remote work over the years. We sifted through it all and pulled out the five pieces we felt every remote team can and should have in their process toolkit - the foundations - and wrapped them up into a neat little package.

Introducing The Remote Team Meeting Essentials Pack. Here's what you'll find inside.

Most people think online sales meetings only last for an hour or so. They join at the beginning, and an hour later it’s over.

However, these are usually the people that attend meetings, not the ones who plan them.

Great salespeople know that much more is involved in making meetings successful: they are actually a series of carefully orchestrated events over the course of a sale.

At any given time you are scheduling, planning, meeting, getting agreement on the next meeting, or following up - then repeating over and over until a sale is closed.

First Get the Meeting on Their Schedule

Find a meeting time that works for everyone. If a decision maker (of any kind) cannot attend, try not to have the meeting. If there is an influencer that wants to meet without a decision maker, you’ll need to consider that you will likely have to meet again. This person may not convey information correctly to their colleague, and/or they may not have even told them about your product or service yet.

Your time is just as valuable as your prospect’s. If you must meet without the proper people, make sure to get their email addresses. Be candid with the rest of the team that you will be following up with notes and action items to everyone, including those who could not attend.

We are living in a digital  world, and it’s likely that every manager has thought seriously about hiring remote workers. 

Remote work is no longer a thing of the future – it is here, now.

In fact, it’s been around since the dawn of time - how else do you think armies were able to navigate world wars, or multi-national corporations were able to set up remote offices in far-flung locations? Examples of distributed teams are everywhere if you look for them.

After all, even if your team works in the same office, they are basically working “remotely” already - they are just across the room in front of their computers. Since everyone is digitally connected, what’s the difference if we are on a different floor, across town, across the country, or on the other side of the world?

As we have demonstrated before, there are not a lot of down sides to working remotely. Once you embrace a few basic principles of managing employees virtually, you'll be on your way to building a highly competent team of remote-working professionals.

Related: How to Make the Case to Your Boss to Work Remotely

Why Work Remotely?

There are some real benefits to working remotely, and if you value them (like we do), then maybe the time has come to approach your boss about the idea.

One big reason employees choose to work from home is so they don't have to commute. A drive (or metro, bus, bike) into work each morning can sometimes put you into a negative frame of mind - especially extra heavy traffic, ice or snow on your car, a construction detour, or heaven forbid, an endo on your bike, for all you bike-friendly city readers (you know it happens). 

Another reason for telecommuting is schedule flexibility. If you have kids and they need to be shuffled to and from school, or your aging parents need a trip to the doctor, or even if the day is so completely beautiful and you just need a few hours to get some precious vitamin D, you can usually do all of the above when you work remotely.

This isn’t to say that you are skipping out on the work that needs to be done, you would just be shuffling it to a more productive time to achieve the same results.