DIKA

Part of being an effective meeting leader means actively planning out the steps that need to be taken during the meeting.

In a general sense, meetings are effective when they begin with successful sharing of thoughts and end with a decision, goal or plan. And often, this is how meetings go, which is great! But as a manager, it is your job to be the person making a conscious effort to facilitate this process.

Having a general framework guiding the meeting flow is a great stepping stone towards a successful meeting. One such framework is the common DIKA, or Data Information Knowledge Action model, which contains the following steps:

Step 1: Data

At the beginning of a meeting or topic, all potentially relevant information should be presented. This is the point of your meeting right? To share information?

Step 2: Information

The next step is to wisely choose which information is necessary and most relevant to the purposes of your meeting.

Step 3: Knowledge

Once useful information is identified, it can be interconnected and built upon to create some purpose or schema.

Step 4: Action

The final step is to use knowledge to choose optimal decisions for going forward.

Consider these steps that information takes as it transforms into action and how they reflect the flow of a meeting, or subtopic within a meeting.

As a meeting leader, the most crucial element is the transitions between stages.

MeetingSift can help you implement this, so you can guide the meeting participants through the DIKA flow! Our brainstorm useful for collecting a basic level of information while ranking and polling are great ways to determine which pieces of information are important. Our results report keeps the knowledge at hand for later as well as serves to hold people accountable for decisions. Not to mention that having a presentation alone allows the meeting leader to control the pace of this information step ladder.