Productive meetings in 5 steps – Skill Level 1
by Donna Lee - Director, Sorach Inc.
This article will enable you to hold better meetings and become a more productive meeting participant and manager – Guaranteed.
Meetings represent a significant part of working hours in most organizations. Therefore even a small improvement in the quality of meetings will bring a large overall benefit to the organization.
Many of us hate meetings even though we know that meetings are the most powerful tool available to an organization for its operation and success. Meetings are where bright ideas are born and tested and where action-items are created and tracked. This is the way organizations move forward.
Meetings are expensive to hold even if no one is traveling. At $60/hr loaded employee rate a meeting of 5 people has burn rate of $300.00 per hour. A three-hour meeting would be about $900.00. So don’t make a big fuss about ordering a few dollars worth of coffee or snacks to help with the logistics of the meeting. Coffee/tea increase the alertness of participants if timed correctly.
Meetings represent a complex interaction between people. The psychology of meetings is very complex. However let me arm you with some basic knowledge that will help you to hold successful meetings.
Meeting Rules
The following rules have proven themselves over and over, still many managers and attendees ignore them. Here are the 5 rules in simplified form:
Rule #1 - Meetings are an important tool, so someone must be responsible for the success of each meeting. Assign or find a volunteer to be the meeting manager. This person will need to do a significant amount of work.
Rule #2 - Before calling a meeting write down, in detail, what would be the outcome of a successful meeting. Share this with all invitees.
Rule #3 - Have a good reason why each person is being invited. Have you missed someone that should be invited from an outside team or department to help out with the subject matter at hand?
Rule #4 - For routine meetings explore if you can hold telephone bridge or video bridge meetings. This is particularly important if participants are from different physical locations. There are many advantages to this approach.
Rule #5 - Meeting must be documented properly. Make sure that the notes, decisions and action items are sent out to all participants and other stakeholders within 48 hours. The designated meeting manager should follow up and ensure that all of the outstanding items are completed and documented.
Meetings are an important part of an organization’s success and must be taken seriously. There are a lot of ideas discussed above, use them as checklist for all your meetings. Having productive meetings is not an art but a conscious process and hard work. Refuse to have mediocre meetings. Teach the above rules to people around you.
Read more management articles at www.sorach.com