Posted by admin on February 24th, 2010
1) Ask everyone to arrive five to ten minutes early. This gives everyone time to socialize, obtain coffee, or organize materials before the meeting. It also ensures that everyone is present at the scheduled starting time. Make this part of the agenda.
2) Discuss sensitive issues with the key participants before the meeting. Use this as an opportunity to listen and gather information on the issues. From this you will understand the different views, needs, and histories. This information can help you prepare the agenda and conduct the meeting. In addition, you may be able to facilitate solutions or strategies for solutions before the meeting. In either case, the result will be a more efficient meeting.
3) Plan small meetings that focus on a single issue. People work more effectively over short periods of time (such as 45 minutes). This also allows you to match experts with issues for more productive meetings.
4) Only invite those who can contribute to at least 50% of the items on the agenda. For meetings lasting more than 30 minutes, invite special participants only to the part of the meeting that deals with their contribution.
5) Send copies of the minutes to everyone who could have been invited for informational purposes. They can read the minutes in a small fraction of the time that they would have been spent in the meeting.
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Posted by admin on January 19th, 2010
Here are ten things that you can do to make your meetings more effective.
1) Avoid meetings. Test the importance of a meeting by asking, “What happens without it?” If your answer is, “Nothing,” then don’t call the meeting.
2) Prepare goals. These are the results you want to obtain by the end of the meeting. Write out your goals before the meetings. They should be so clear, complete, and specific that someone else could use them to lead your meeting. Also, make sure they can be achieved with available people, resources, and time. Specific goals help everyone make efficient progress toward relevant results.
3) Challenge each goal. Ask, “Is there another way to achieve this?” For example, if you want to distribute information, you may find it more efficient to phone, FAX, mail, E-mail, or visit. Realize that a meeting is a team activity. Save tasks that require a team effort for your meetings.
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Posted by admin on January 1st, 2010
Here are ten fundamental concepts that characterize an effective meeting.
1) Definition: A meeting is a business activity where select people gather to perform work that requires a team effort.
2) A meeting, like any business event, succeeds when it is preceded by planning, characterized by focus, governed by structure, and controlled by a budget.
3) Short meetings free people to work on the essential activities that represent the core of their jobs. In contrast, long meetings prevent people from working on critical tasks such as planning, communicating, and learning.
4) Three things guarantee an unproductive meeting: poor planning, lack of appropriate process, and hostile culture. Effective leaders attend to all of these to create an effective meeting.
5) Effective meetings require sharing control and making commitments.
6) The ultimate goals of every meeting are agreements, decisions, or solutions. Meetings held for other reasons seldom produce anything of value.
7) Unprepared participants will spend their time in the meeting preparing for the meeting.
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Posted by admin on August 23rd, 2009
These myths have cost companies billions of dollars direction wasted payroll check.
Myth #1 ) Structure spoils spontaneity.
I once attended a two – tide longish mishap that tender cost over $40, 000. Thirty individuals spent the primordial hour seeking an topic to kick about, so spent the ensuing 15 hours arguing over oppressive problems. When I asked the administrator who called the meet, ” Locale ‘ s the agenda? ” the reply was, ” I didn ‘ t want to spoil the spontaneity by grand a structure. ”
Reality: If spontaneity were a universally sound employment practice we would habit buildings kiss goodbye blueprints. Of course, no apt work controller works wandering a plot.
The Fix: Set a object and forasmuch as prepare an agenda. Ideally, this agenda should embody ergo bright, thorough, and specific that someone exceeding could applicability unfeigned to cause the conclave to gain the accomplish the destination.
Myth #2: Since factual ‘ s my bunch I should pull off all the words.
Some meetings are pace related a medieval beagle. The chairperson sits on a verbal throne while the subjects sit in respectful silence. The big talker justifies this by thinking: if the other people in the meeting knew anything worthwhile, they ‘ d be leading the meeting.
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