Bhavin Gandhi

Thriving in Recession: Strategies to Do More with Less Resources

In times of economic uncertainty and a looming recession, startups and small businesses face the challenge of optimizing their operations with limited resources. One crucial area to focus on is maximizing productivity and efficiency within the existing workforce. By implementing strategic approaches and creative solutions, companies can weather the storm and find new opportunities for growth. This blog explores effective strategies for doing more with fewer resources, enabling startups to navigate the recession successfully.

Streamline Processes and Prioritize: Evaluate existing workflows and identify areas that can be streamlined or automated. Simplify processes to eliminate unnecessary steps and optimize efficiency. Prioritize tasks based on their impact and align them with core business objectives. By focusing on essential activities, you can make the most of limited resources and ensure that efforts are aligned with strategic goals. For example: in one of the startups, I implemented an automated bug tracking system in JIRA that streamlined the software development workflow and reduced time spent on manual tasks through minimal process changes and development efforts.

Embrace Technology: Leverage technology to augment productivity and enhance operational efficiency. Implement project management tools, collaboration platforms, and automation software to streamline tasks and reduce manual effort. Embracing digital transformation can significantly optimize workflows and empower employees to achieve more with fewer resources. For example: in my last company, I had automated manual data entry through Barcode scanner app that simplified the production line process, reduced production time and optimized efficiency.

Cross-Train and Foster Collaboration: Promote a culture of cross-training and collaboration within the organization. Encourage employees to develop versatile skill sets and be proficient in multiple areas. This flexibility enables teams to adapt quickly to changing demands, fill gaps in expertise, and maximize productivity with a leaner workforce. Foster collaboration across departments, encouraging knowledge sharing and collective problem-solving. As an example, I promoted a continuous learning culture within my team by encouraging each team member to share their learnings during our weekly team meetings.

Outsourcing and Partnerships: Consider outsourcing non-core functions to external vendors or partners. By delegating certain tasks or projects, startups can access specialized expertise while maintaining cost-efficiency. Outsourcing can provide a flexible and scalable solution, allowing companies to focus their internal resources on core competencies and strategic initiatives. during the COVID-19 pandemic, we opted to outsource certain functions in our tech start-up, such as recruiting, quality assurance, IT infrastructure support, and tax compliance, to a third-party provider. This decision was made to alleviate operational burdens and ensure smooth operations amidst the challenging circumstances.

Focus on Employee Engagement and Retention: During challenging times, it becomes crucial to engage and retain top talent. Invest in employee development programs, recognition initiatives, and a positive work culture. Engaged employees are more motivated and productive, enabling the organization to achieve more with a limited workforce. Additionally, retaining experienced staff eliminates the need for extensive training and onboarding, saving both time and resources.

Emphasize Innovation and Creativity: Encourage employees to think outside the box and explore innovative solutions. Foster a culture that values creativity and rewards initiatives that lead to resource optimization. Employees often have valuable insights and ideas for process improvements, cost reductions, and efficiency gains. By empowering them to contribute and experiment, you can tap into a wealth of untapped potential within your organization.

Continuous Improvement and Agile Mindset: Adopt an agile mindset and embrace a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage employees to identify areas for optimization, provide feedback, and propose innovative solutions. Implement regular feedback loops, performance reviews, and retrospective sessions to gather insights and drive continuous growth. Small incremental changes can accumulate over time, resulting in significant efficiency gains and cost savings.

In times of economic uncertainty, doing more with fewer resources is a key challenge for startups. By streamlining processes, embracing technology, fostering collaboration, outsourcing when necessary, focusing on employee engagement, and nurturing an innovative mindset, companies can navigate the recession successfully. These strategies not only optimize productivity but also lay the foundation for long-term resilience and growth. With the right mindset and proactive measures, startups can thrive even in challenging times, emerging stronger and more adaptable than ever before.

Relevant Hashtags: StartupOptimization, #ResourceEfficiency, #ProductivityHacks #StrategicApproaches, #CreativeSolutions, #NavigatingRecession, #DigitalTransformation, #CollaborationCulture, #OutsourcingStrategies

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on June 23, 2023 in 21st Century, Leadership, small business, Startup

Tags: #CollaborationCulture, #CreativeSolutions, #DigitalTransformation, #InnovationMatters, #NavigatingRecession, #OutsourcingStrategies, #ProductivityHacks, #ResourceEfficiency, #StartupOptimization, #StrategicApproaches

Maximizing Your Startup’s Potential: How to Choose the Right Accelerator Program

11 Apr

Are you a startup founder who’s considering joining an accelerator program, but not sure which one to choose? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Recently, I had an older colleague reach out to me with the same question, and it inspired me to write this blog to help others in a similar situation.

When choosing the right accelerator program, there are many factors to consider. One of the key factors is the industry focus. Some accelerators specialize in specific industries, which may be a better fit for your company. Another important factor is the accelerator’s network of mentors, investors, and alumni. Having a strong network can be a valuable resource for a founder.

Funding is another factor to consider, as most accelerators provide funding to participating companies in exchange for equity. It’s important to evaluate the amount of funding offered and the terms of the investment. Additionally, the length of the accelerator program and the location of the accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to access resources, talent, and investors.

Reputation is also an important consideration. The reputation of an accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to attract investors and customers. Finally, the curriculum and resources offered by an accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to grow and scale their company.

For example, when I was choosing an accelerator program for my ex-startup, SellGone, we found that StartupNV was a great fit for us. They specialized in helping tech-based startups in Nevada, had a strong network of mentors, investors, and alumni, and provided funding to Nevada-based startups who participated in their program. We also appreciated their curriculum and resources, which helped us grow and scale our company.

So, if you’re considering joining an accelerator program, be sure to evaluate these factors and choose the one that’s the best fit for your company. Good luck on your startup journey!

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on April 11, 2023 in 21st Century, small business, technology

Tags: #AcceleratorPrograms, #ChoosingTheRightFit, #IndustryFocus, #MaximizingPotential, #NavigatingAcceleratorPrograms, #StartupAccelerators, #StartupAlumni, #StartupCurriculum, #StartupFunding, #StartupInvestors, #StartupJourney, #StartupMentors, #StartupResources, #StartupSuccess

Driving Success: How TPMs Help Resolve Dependencies Between Teams

08 Mar

In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment, cross-functional teams are becoming increasingly common as companies seek to innovate and stay ahead. However, with multiple teams working on various projects, dependencies between them can be a significant challenge, resulting in delays, miscommunication, and even project failures. Technical Program Managers (TPMs) can play a crucial role in resolving dependencies between cross-functional teams. This blog post will explore how TPMs can help facilitate effective communication, collaboration, and coordination between teams to ensure that programs are delivered on time and achieve organizational goals.

Facilitating communication: TPMs coordinate communication between teams, identify gaps, and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Regular meetings or stand-ups can be set up where teams provide dependency updates, identify roadblocks or dependencies, and prioritize tasks. These sessions can be used to share progress reports, discuss risks and mitigation strategies, and align on timelines and deliverables.

Identifying dependencies: TPMs often have a high-level view of all the programs executed within the organization. Thus, they can identify dependencies between teams and track their status to ensure they are being addressed in a timely manner before they become a blocker for achieving the company’s objectives.

Prioritizing and tracking dependencies: TPMs have a deep understanding of intra-team and inter-team dynamics, given the cross-functional nature of their role. Thus, TPMs can manage inter and intra team dependencies to ensure that one team’s work is not blocked by the lack of progress on the part of another team. They can prioritize the work of different teams based on their impact on dependencies and the company’s objectives, and identify and mitigate risks associated with dependencies across different teams.

Building relationships and trust: TPMs can help build relationships and trust between cross-functional teams to ensure they can work effectively, particularly when dealing with dependencies. This can be achieved by sharing information, being transparent, conducting joint brainstorming sessions, breaking down silos, defining ownership, setting clear expectations, and strengthening personal relationships by driving offsite events.

Improving transparency: TPMs can provide the necessary transparency to the team to drive efficiency in resolving dependencies. They can communicate deadlines to the right stakeholders to adjust plans accordingly and use tools like JIRA, Asana, Microsoft Project, Wiki, and collaboration platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams to facilitate communication through shared dashboards and/or weekly reports.

In summary, TPMs play a vital role in managing dependencies between teams by facilitating effective communication, tracking and prioritizing work, building relationships, and improving transparency. They ensure that teams work together effectively and that all dependencies are identified and addressed in a timely manner to ensure program success.

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 8, 2023 in Leadership, Management, small business

Tags: #collaboration, #communication, #crossfunctionalteams, #dependencies, #efficiency, #innovation, #interdisciplinary, #leadership, #organizationalgoals, #productivity, #programmanagement, #projectmanagement, #teamwork, #timemanagement, #TPM

Navigating a Layoff: 9 Steps to Take for Your Next Career Move?

16 Feb

With the current economic situation, many companies have begun downsizing their workforce in preparation for the future. This means that many people may know someone who has lost their job or been impacted by the economic downturn. To help navigate this difficult situation, I want to offer some guidance on what steps to take if you are affected by a layoff at your company.

Review company’s severance package: Understand what benefits and compensation are being offered and if it’s sufficient or not. I have often seen multiple people who didn’t reach out to their ex-employer to ask for their COBRA benefits, rehabilitation services, and much more. Thus, you should take advantage of these benefits by closely reviewing your severance package.

Apply for unemployment benefits: Many people who are laid off are eligible for unemployment benefits, which can provide financial assistance while they are looking for a new job. You shouldn’t be shy to take advantage of this benefit, after all you have paid into the system for this specific situation.

Create a budget: With no salary coming in, it is essential that you control your expenses, so that you can manage your lifestyle within your means. Thus, I highly recommend you to make a budget to manage your expenses, and prioritize bills and necessary spending while looking for new opportunities.

Create a plan: After being laid off, your natural instinct is to look for another job right away or take a small break before starting to look again. Regardless of your end goal, I encourage you to create a plan and make a schedule for your break, searching and applying for new jobs, networking, and updating your resume and online presence.

Network: So far, I have been very fortunate to find a job on referral, and hence, I never had to actively look for a job. Thus, I recommend you to reach out to your friends, family, and professional contacts to let them know you are looking for a new job and to ask for leads or references.

Update your resume: While applying for the new opportunities, you should remember to tailor your resume to specific job positions and industries, and make sure it is error-free and easy to read, so that it doesn’t get stuck in the application tracking system (ATS) and has a better chance of getting viewed by an actual human.

Take care of yourself: Obviously, this is going to be a difficult journey, if you haven’t been laid off before. But don’t let the stress and uncertainty of a layoff get you down. Eat well, exercise, and take care of your mental and emotional health more than anything else. If you are physically and mentally fit, then you will be able to conquer anything.

Learn new skills: Even though learning new skills might be at the bottom of your list, since you must be focusing on finding a new opportunity as soon as possible, I still recommend you to invest some time in either learning new skills or refining your existing skills. This investment will pay off while you are interviewing for your next opportunity or in the future when you are solving different problems.

Look for job retraining programs: Many governments and private organizations offer job retraining programs to help laid-off workers acquire new skills and find new jobs. I highly encourage you to take advantage of these programs to seek professional help if needed. If the layoff caused significant financial and emotional distress, don’t hesitate to reach out to a financial advisor or mental health professional for help.

I hope these steps help you to cope with the situation and begin planning for your next career move.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on February 16, 2023 in 21st Century, Leadership, technology

Tags: #budgetingtips, #joblossrecovery, #jobretraining, #jobsearching, #layoffsurvivalguide, #networkingtips, #resumewriting, #selfcare, #unemploymentbenefits, #upskilling

How to increase the velocity of your Agile Teams?

15 May

A year ago, I got an opportunity to lead an agile team for the Electronic Table Games vertical at IGT. This team was made up of very smart individuals, who put IGT’s name in the electronic table game’s market space within just couple of years. IGT was an underdog in this market, but this team’s hard work and dedication had allowed IGT to bring two successful titles to the market. Even though this team was successful in making this vertical profitable over time, their velocity was not sufficient to keep up with the already competitive market pressure. Thus, I was called to help the team.

Over the year, I have made many tweaks to this already successful team. And hence, I would like to share some of success stories from my experience that have worked for us. I am hoping that you could use these pointers to increase the velocity of your own agile team.

Co-locate your team: After joining the team, I quickly realize that the team could improve their face-to-face communication. Even though the engineering team talked to each other daily, the communication between the QA and Product Management team was infrequent and rare due to their physical proximity to the engineering team. Thus, we went ahead and relocated all of our QA and Product Management resources with the engineering team. This change promoted the face to face communication between the teams and improved our velocity by reducing communication time between the developers and the QA engineers. Obviously, this change was challenging, given my team was located all over the US. But we were lucky to have multiple clusters of the team where more than 4 people were together in the same building. Thus, co-location was practical and beneficial in our case.

Reuse common components: At IGT, we were creating different games, and hence, all the developers were making customized software for each game. Even though we were required to make customized interfaces for each game, given the vertical that we work in, I looked for some common components that we could reuse. To my surprise, I was able to find many communication APIs and other architectural components that were common between each game titles. By making some minor modifications to those components, we were able to reuse them for other games that we were making. Thus, I believe that you should invest some time during your Sprint to look for common software components, which you can reuse to significantly decrease effort spent on building the same functionality. Developing a strong process around this mentality will help you in decreasing product development time.

Increase test automation: You might argue that this is compulsory for increasing the velocity of any software product team, but you would be surprised to see how many agile teams follow this practice. Since the focus of any agile team is on delivering minimum viable products, they often underestimate the investment that they need to make in testing. Thus, most of their testers perform some basic manual tests before releasing the product. In our case, we were able to increase our automation test footprint by providing engineering tools to our testers and investing heavily in test automation as compared to the manual testing. As a result of this change, we were able to improve the quality of our games and expand our testing footprint, which in turn increased our velocity.

Do you agree with my recommendations? Do you have any other ideas through which we can improve the velocity of our Agile Teams?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 15, 2020 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology

Tags: Agile Teams, Co-location, Innovate faster, Scrum Teams, Software Development, Velocity

How to become better at listening?

07 Mar

Coaching your line managers I can’t help but think about one of the meetings that I had a month back. During this meeting, I had to work with my team to create a road map of all the projects that we were going to do after few structural changes that had happened in our organization. It should have been a simple meeting. I should have presented company’s objectives for the next fiscal year to my team and then I should have allowed them to provide their input to create a road map which works for the team to achieve our objectives. It was a very simple task.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get the right answers from my team during that meeting. I am not sure what I was doing wrong at the time, as that meeting was not that productive and I was unable to get anything done. That incident got me thinking about the bigger question. Do I always ask right questions? If I do, then why am I not getting right answers? What am I missing here? What can I do to improve that process? After some analysis and introspection, I have realized that I was not listening to my team while I presented them with our objectives. And hence, I have come up with few practical tips and tricks through which I had improved my listening skills that I would like to share it with you here.

Be patient: In the past, I often fell into the trap of asking bunch of questions, all at once, so I don’t miss anything. Or worst, when someone is speaking, I actively tried to ask them my question right there and then, when they are talking, so that I can clarify things in the heat of the moment. Though this kind of a one-sided question dump had worked for me in the past in some situations, it didn’t provide most of my peers enough time to think and respond. Even though I was getting answers to my questions through this approach, often times I was not getting the right answer or an informative one. And hence, I tried to be patient with my questions during this last month. I also did my research beforehand, and found out what kind of answers I was looking for before asking those questions. I invested some time in noting down my questions while someone is speaking, so that I don’t forget what I wanted to ask, and at the same time I don’t interrupt my peers in between where they lose their train of thoughts. I tried to keep a pen and paper handy or used my OneNote on my phone to jot down any questions that I had, while someone else was speaking. This was one of the most practical thing I could do while listening to others and at the same time making sure that I remember my pointers to discuss.

Let silence speak: Other than being patient during meetings, I have also conducted various other experiments at my work within this past month. One of them being – using silence to speak for itself. When I was in a meeting, I often used silence as a tool to communicate when it was my time to ask questions. It was definitely a game changer for me. When I remained silent for few seconds before responding, everyone’s attention was at me before I even started speaking, and they were listening, yes, they were. I also used silence while asking questions to others. I would ask a question and then take a pause for a while. That approach did wonders for me, as it gave an opportunity to the responder to prepare their response before speaking. Obviously, it took a while before I got used to this practice, but this technique proved to be very helpful. If you want to try this technique then please make the pause long enough for the answerer to think but not too long so it becomes awkward. And while the answerer is preparing for his/her answers, try keeping eye contact, stand still, and try to feel comfortable while you wait. I am sure that you will get responses from people who hardly even spoke in the meeting. Just try it and let me know.

I am hoping that you all learn from my experiences and become better at listening. If you have any other ways through which we can be a good listener then please feel free to share it through your comments here. I would really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on March 7, 2018 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: 21st century, Get right answers, Leadership, Listening, Management, Practical ways to listen, Use patience, Use silence

How to change your organization to innovate faster?

05 Jun

First of all, I would like to thank you all for such an overwhelming response to my last blog. I haven’t yet responded to all of your emails and personal messages, but I will respond to them within next few days.

While going through your messages, I have also realized one thing, most of you are not happy with just innovating at a restricted budget, but you are looking to innovate at a faster pace than before. With the technology and the world moving faster each day, I can definitely understand your sentiment. Thus, in this blogpost, I will provide you with some strategies through which you can increase the speed of your innovation at your workplace.

Eliminate hierarchy: Large organizations often find it hard to respond to new market opportunities and change quickly due to the hierarchical burden that comes with these organizations. Thus, if it is possible, we should create smaller R&D teams in our organization which has its own budget and, who can work independently within this organization. If you don’t have that liberty to independently manage the R&D team, then you should at least keep it simple. Try to keep the product cycle small, and perform frequent inspection. Purpose of these inspections shouldn’t be profit based, just yet, but it should be a checking point to make sure that the research is headed in the right direction.

Change incentive system: From Microsoft to Google, we always hire R&D personnel from science-oriented background, and hence, their interests lie in technology, not in markets. These employees, being from technical background, are not trained to engage their customers in the decision making process. Thus, if we want to change this culture of “obsolete innovation”, then we have to start by changing the incentive system, itself. If we use stock options to align the work of our technical staff with the firm’s financial performance, then they will be able to understand the business environment in which your organization does business, and they are more likely to innovate things that help your business.

Create new roles: Changing the incentive system alone wouldn’t help you to change the culture of the entire organization. In order to kick start this organization-wide change, you need to create some new roles within the organization to focus explicitly on customer engagement. This can be done with either existing or new personnel who are placed in important positions within R&D where they can effect change. You can also build new, multi-skilled teams to help change existing practices within R&D. This might involve building teams with both marketing and technical skills to reduce traditional barriers between R&D, sales and customers. It may not even be necessary for all R&D personnel to change or take on a more customer-focused role. Just having one in five in an R&D team being more customer-focused might be enough.

I have seen this strategy work for many small businesses, and I am sure that it can work for you too, if implemented correctly. Please provide your feedback on this blogpost through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on June 5, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, small business

Tags: Increase innovation speed, Innovate faster, Innovation catalyst, Leadership of tomorrow, Organizational change

How to innovate with less resources?

18 May

Regardless of what kind of business you run, small or large, you always have to keep on innovating, otherwise your business will become irrelevant in no time. But when times are tough and when you don’t have much money to spend, how do you still keep your commitment to innovate more? Thus, through this blogpost, I am going to provide you with few suggestions using which you can innovate on a tight budget.

Involve customers throughout: Your customers are your best critique. Thus, you should involve them throughout the product life cycle. Rather than wasting your money on getting the second-hand market data or hiring focus groups, you must engage directly with your customers in their natural settings. Involve your existing customers with your R&D teams to unearth new or unmet needs. Interact with users in new market segments by actively involving customers in new product design processes, as well as tracking customers’ use of the product after purchase. The focus on customer needs will enable R&D to replace its costly and scattershot approach to product development with more efficient, user-focused investment.

Seek cheaper solutions: Too often, we reinvent the wheel and end up with too complex of a product for our customers. Customers, however, are more likely to be impressed by products that solve their problems than by mere technological prowess. When you have unlimited resources at your disposal, it is easier to go overboard with your R&D efforts. But when you have very limited funds, you should be guided first and foremost by your customer insight, and produce easy-to-use offerings that may lack bells and whistles but are good enough, especially if they come at a lower price. This approach will not only help you to bring your products faster into your markets, but it will also help you in getting the faster feedback for your products in real time.

Use of crowdsourcing: If you are on a tighter budget, you should definitely look for crowdsourcing your R&D efforts. Obviously, you can’t crowd source everything due to your intellectual property rights and other concerns, but you can crowd source plausible product ideas and gauge their initial public reactions. Ideas that garner sufficient support can be then packaged with supporting data and sent to the relevant managers, who in turn signal their view of its potential to executives responsible for taking such ideas forward. You can also use social media networks, where customers reveal and share their preferences to yield a wealth of market insights at lower costs.

I hope, my blog can help you innovate new things for your business within a restricted budget. If you know any other ways through which we can innovate with less resources, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 18, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

Tags: Crowdsourcing, Innovate cheaply, Innovate for less, Leadership of tomorrow, Pragmatic innovation, Think smarter

Schedule the best virtual meeting by following these rules

05 May

In my last blog, I have talked about some ways through which you can schedule a perfect virtual meeting. Thus, I will continue my discussion in this blog, and provide you with some more tips to make your next virtual meeting perfect.

Allow extra time: If you are scheduling a virtual meeting for the first time, then please schedule some extra time for dealing with the technical challenges that you might face during the meeting startup. Use this extra time to work out glitches that often occur with new technology. Over time, when your team members are familiar with login or startup procedures, you can then reduce the meeting duration by the amount of time that you might have otherwise spent on connection issues. If you have a new member joining your team, then you should arrange a trial meeting to check connections and ensure that the new member is up to speed before a larger group meeting.

Provide more lead time: The lead time required for virtual meetings might be longer than for in-person meetings, since in addition to the virtual space, you need to ensure that all participants have the necessary information about the meeting before they join in. It is your responsibility, as an organizer of the meeting, to ensure that every team member understands the goals of the meeting and has sufficient time in order to prepare for it. After all, if critical decision makers or technical experts are not prepared in the meeting due to short notice given to them, then you will end up scheduling a second meeting for the same agenda.

Provide detailed information: If you are going to organize a virtual meeting with multiple people joining in from multiple locations and through multiple means of communication (phone, video, etc.), then you need to be more detailed in your meeting requests. Meeting agenda should at least specify this information: name and contact information of the person calling the meeting, meeting purpose, meeting start time and expected duration, names of invited attendees, meeting location including connection information, phone numbers, URLs, connection passwords or login IDs, or any other information attendees need in order to participate, and list of the topics to be discussed and time limits for each topic. If you do your homework in creating your meeting agenda beforehand, then you won’t have many issues during the meeting itself.

Invite limited people: Virtual meetings are often encountered with various challenges from time differences to technology difficulties, and hence, you shouldn’t try to complicate things by inviting people who are not needed in the meeting. Make sure that you have everyone in the meeting who needs to be there, but don’t over crowd the meeting with the people who are not needed there. By inviting limited people in the meeting, you will be able to keep everyone focused on the task at hand, and there will be less of a chance for any confusion due to people talking over each other on the phone or video conference.

This is the end of my two part blog about scheduling a perfect virtual meeting. I hope, these advises can help you in scheduling your ideal meetings. If you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

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Posted by Bhavin Gandhi on May 5, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology, Virtual Team

Tags: Remote team meetings, Schedule conference calls, Schedule virtual meeting, Virtual meetings, Virtual Team, Work remotely

How to schedule a perfect virtual meeting?

21 Apr

Other day, I was attending this virtual meeting, and within 5 minutes in the meeting, I realized that some of the key stakeholders wouldn’t be able to make this meeting due to their time zone difference. Within 10 minutes into the meeting, I also realized that other participants were not well prepared, and we might have to convene some other day to discuss these same action items.

Obviously, scheduling a perfect in-person meeting also requires some level of preparation, but to schedule a perfect virtual meeting is a challenge in itself. You don’t just need to make sure that the meeting agenda is well defined and thought out, but you also need to handle logistics challenges imposed by difference in time zones and technology limitations. Thus, in this blog, I will provide you with few tips through which you can schedule your perfect virtual meeting.

Be agenda ready: Whether your meeting is virtual or in person, you should always have a well-defined agenda for your meeting, which should be clearly stated in the meeting request itself. If, for whatever reason, you can’t explicitly mention your agenda in the meeting request, you should send out an email to all the participants with this information beforehand. This approach will not only help your participants to set some basic expectations about the output of this meeting, but it will also help you to make sure that your participants are prepared beforehand with the desired information, so that they can respond to your questions and come up to some kind of an agreement.

Keep time in mind: Whenever you are scheduling a virtual meeting, you need to always be aware of different time zones from which your attendees will attend this meeting. After all, you won’t be attending a meeting at 3am in the morning, unless it is very important, right? Same goes for your meeting attendees. They are not going to put an extra effort to attend your meeting at 3am in the morning, just because it is convenient for you. Thus, before scheduling the meeting search for your attendee’s time zones and schedule the meeting at appropriate time.

Share the pain: Sometimes, due to the vast time difference between two virtual teams, it is impossible to schedule these meetings within the regular working hours (8am to 5pm) of both the teams. And hence, it is very important to share the inconvenience across your team rather than always have the same person/team meeting before breakfast or late in the evening. If you have to schedule regular meetings across multiple time zones, then you should rotate the pain across the board by changing the team each week that has to stay late to attend the meeting.

I hope, this blog can help you in scheduling a perfect virtual meeting for your team. In my next blog, I will provide you with some more insight into how to schedule your virtual meetings better, but in the meanwhile if you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi