Featured CEO & Board Advisor — James Routledge

Strategic leaders strive to cultivate an environment conducive to the growth of their employees. Meetings are a great way for them to gauge the sentiment at work and make sure everyone is doing what they are supposed to.

Strategic leadership meetings involve meaningful discussions regarding what management styles an organization should adopt, their vision, boosting strategic productivity, and many other important facets of running a business.

CEO of a company and a board advisor for many others, James Routledge has found Otter to be particularly useful during these meetings and for his work in general.

James shared how helpful Otter has been during team meetings by acting as a third person taking meeting minutes, saving them valuable time and effort. It also helps them note exciting ideas that may have popped up during discussion so that they can easily refer back to them.

“Whenever we do strategic leadership team meetings, we will use Otter to dictate for us. It notates out everything we’re saying, and we can pull out those key actions and share them again. We even have keywords, so whenever something impactful is said, someone will call out ‘Egg!’ so we can search for it later.”

As a CEO and board advisor, James has to make pivotal decisions regarding strategic leadership goals and more. Using Otter during the recruitment process to transcribe initial interviews helps him explore the capabilities of a candidate.  

He also shone a light on how it is equally beneficial for the candidates. If they get selected, he sits down with them to reflect on the interview and see what aspects of the discussion were positive. Even if they move on to other things, they would be able to determine the areas that can be improved.

James also shared how he struggled with dyslexia and that even though he has been a keynote speaker in front of thousands of people, he finds it challenging to write and send out stimulating emails. Otter has been beneficial for him in this regard.

“I can use Otter to quickly dictate out something important that I want to tell a large number of people, and I can review it. And then, by quickly playing through and looking at the keywords I’m using, I can distill that down to those one or two lines in an important email that is sent to a large number of people.”

Otter performs functions that people seldom have time for, such as taking down points in a meeting. This allows decision-makers such as James to save time and focus on the key issues instead of wandering off. It also helps them share the points from the meeting in either little snippets or whole sessions with keywords marked out.

This is an effective strategy that can help busy strategic leaders keep a note of what was said in case they forget and send it to others who may not have attended the meeting.

“These help us to have more impactful meetings.”

Otter streamlines work processes and makes them more productive with reliable interview and meeting transcriptions. James has made use of this platform to become more effective at what he does, and you can too.