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Member You - Developing Efficient Meetings
There has been a death in our society that has yet to be noticed; the death of common sense. I discovered that common sense is kind of hard to define because everyone seems to have a different idea of what it is and what isn’t. Here’s my take on it: Common sense is native good judgment derived from experience based on the “reasonable person standard”. What would the average, reasonable person do in a situation?Common sense is a funny thing. We admire people who have a strategic mind, a flair for style, or vast creativity. We rarely admire someone for his or her common sense. It’s the unsung hero of attributes. We seem to assume that everyone has it an
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who t
If you are in business for yourself you have certainly had customers who are the customers from hell. You try everything you can including giving them free service, comp’ing their meal or even giving them discounts or free extras, yet the more you do the more they complain.Some people just like to complain a lot and that is one thing, but when they take advantage of you can make a scene in front of other customers they make the experience of your location less desirable to other customers and actually they will hurt your business. There comes a point at which each company must decide if they should fire the customer and put them on a do not serve le
The first two responses were…
“Meetings are looooooooooong,” and “Meetings are BOW-ring (this workshop was actually held in my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas – thus the Texas twang.)”
Those two responses almost always come up when I ask the question. Others that also come up a lot are: Wastes of time, non-productive, confrontational, inefficient, repetitive, and a number of other negative descriptions. Every once in a while, I get a response like positive, informative, or necessary, but usually the other participants gang-up against the person very quickly.
Most people believe that meetings are necessary evils, and in many cases, they are. But one of the most important things we can remember about meetings is to NOT have one unless the meeting is absolutely necessary. When your employees and coworkers are in staff meetings, they are not producing. Nothing is ever produced until after the meeting is over. Some one of my first pieces of advice to people who want to make meetings more effective is to have fewer of them.
About five years ago, I made this statement in a class, and a young lady in the front row raised her hand and said, “That sounds really good, but my whole job description involves going to meetings.” I was intrigued, so I asked her to tell me more. She was a personal assistant to a manager of a Fortune 500 company, and she was hired by her boss to attend the meetings that he could not attend himself because there were not enough hours in the day. After class, she and I sat down and identified 32-hours of wasted meeting time that she was participating in every week. These were meetings that neither she nor her boss was actually needed for, but that one of them attended every week. Over the next year, this one person increased productivity of her team by over 200%. Granted, this is an extreme case, but there are probably hours in each of our weeks that are wasted by ineffective meetings.
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who ta
Once you are a small business owner, you will need to determine the best way to advertise your business to get your name out in the world and let everyone know you are open for business.There are quite a few free advertising methods. Superpages.com allows you to add your listing at no charge, plus you can add as much information as you want to promote your business.Building even a small, one page web site can help promote your business. There are numerous search engines that you can add your URL to once your web site is complete, which will get your name out into the world. Web site hosters can help you with your site, offering pre-made templat
Most people believe that meetings are necessary evils, and in many cases, they are. But one of the most important things we can remember about meetings is to NOT have one unless the meeting is absolutely necessary. When your employees and coworkers are in staff meetings, they are not producing. Nothing is ever produced until after the meeting is over. Some one of my first pieces of advice to people who want to make meetings more effective is to have fewer of them.
About five years ago, I made this statement in a class, and a young lady in the front row raised her hand and said, “That sounds really good, but my whole job description involves going to meetings.” I was intrigued, so I asked her to tell me more. She was a personal assistant to a manager of a Fortune 500 company, and she was hired by her boss to attend the meetings that he could not attend himself because there were not enough hours in the day. After class, she and I sat down and identified 32-hours of wasted meeting time that she was participating in every week. These were meetings that neither she nor her boss was actually needed for, but that one of them attended every week. Over the next year, this one person increased productivity of her team by over 200%. Granted, this is an extreme case, but there are probably hours in each of our weeks that are wasted by ineffective meetings.
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who t
1) CREATE A WEBSITE This will act as a Portfolio and lists all the items you created and want to sell. Make it detailed and list the pricing information for those interested in purchasing. You can even add a shopping cart and get fancy with features you'd like to present to your audience like an "about" page for example. Add shipping information, and a section for those who would like to buy in bulk like wholesalers or buyers. If you do not know the first thing about how to create a website, there are a lot of ways you could get someone to make one for you or find online companies that give a package for your site including
About five years ago, I made this statement in a class, and a young lady in the front row raised her hand and said, “That sounds really good, but my whole job description involves going to meetings.” I was intrigued, so I asked her to tell me more. She was a personal assistant to a manager of a Fortune 500 company, and she was hired by her boss to attend the meetings that he could not attend himself because there were not enough hours in the day. After class, she and I sat down and identified 32-hours of wasted meeting time that she was participating in every week. These were meetings that neither she nor her boss was actually needed for, but that one of them attended every week. Over the next year, this one person increased productivity of her team by over 200%. Granted, this is an extreme case, but there are probably hours in each of our weeks that are wasted by ineffective meetings.
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who t
Competition in business sectors has increased very much during the course of the 21st century. In order for businesspersons to maintain a relationship with their customers and suppliers, they are required to stay in touch with them, and sometimes visit them at different locations all over the world. They also assign employees to market their products and service on their behalf. Business travel of this nature calls for expenditure on airfare, accommodation, food and other travel related expenditure. The expenses incurred by an employee can be filed in the form of a report for the purpose of reimbursement from the employer. These reports are referred to as ex
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who t
Some alarming workplace factsDid you know that everyday more than 12 U.S. workers on an average lose their lives through workplace accidents? Yet another 10,000 are hurt so badly, they end up losing sizeable work time or are placed on restricted duty? Startling? These are the facts as reported by OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.Typical accidents encountered at workplacesPeople have fallen from elevations, got caught in explosions, body parts have been crushed in machinery, men have been electrocuted by defective electrical equipment, and trenches and walls have caved in on workmen…this list is by no
The tips below are strategies that I have collected over the years from class members who swear by their effectiveness. I hope they work for you as well.
1) Have an Agenda: Outline ahead of time what points will be covered in the meeting. Write it out, and distribute it to participants ahead of time. This will help avoid the “chasing of rabbits,” and help participants be more prepared for the meeting.
2) Follow the Agenda: This sounds very elementary, but you’d be surprised by the number of people who take the time to create an agenda, and then totally disregard the agenda during the meeting.
3) Limit the Agenda to Three Points or Less: Ask yourself, “What are the three most important things we need to cover in the meeting?” Limit the agenda to these three points. The rest of the things you wanted to cover, by definition, weren’t really that important anyway, so why waste everyone’s time?
4) Set a Time Limit: I would suggest setting the time limit for the meeting to be no longer than 30-minutes. In future meetings, shorten the time by five minutes until the time limit is 15-minutes or less. The leader of the meeting will become much more efficient, and the participants will become much more focused as well. When the time limit is up, end the meeting. You may not get to cover every single thing that you wanted to the first couple of time you try this, but within a short time, you will find that the major information points are being discussed and decisions are being made very efficiently.
5) Encourage Participation from Everyone, but don’t Force Them: Instead of going around the table and asking for opinions or input, just ask a question and let people volunteer their answers. There will be times during any meeting that each person will “phase out” (especially if it is a looooong and BOW-ring meeting.) If we call on every person, it wastes time, and puts people on the spot. Other ways of encouraging participation is to just ask a question, and after someone answers, say something like, “Good, let’s hear from someone else.” If there are people in your meeting who rarely speak, instead of calling on them directly, you might say something like, “I value the opinion of each of you, does anyone else have something to add.” Then, just look at the person you want to hear from. If he or she has something to say, he or she will say it if encouraged in this way. If he or she doesn’t, then you haven’t embarrassed the person.
Meetings can be a very powerful way to communicate and solve problems. In past workshops that I have facilitated, we have shown leaders how to identify the root-cause of a problem, come up with dozens of possible solutions, come to a consensus as group on the best possible solution, an
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