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Introduction
Bruce Honig, CEO, The Meetings Company 11.03.09 | Leave a comment
Tips
1. Decide why you want to have a meeting. What is the purpose of the meeting? What are you trying to accomplish, address, or resolve? 2. If you determine that a meeting is necessary, develop and share an agenda with those who will be attending the meeting at least one week in advance. 3. The person who runs the meeting (facilitator) should adhere to the items on the agenda. 4. The facilitator should also make sure that the time allotted for each agenda item is honored. Two suggestions to accomplish this include: a. Establishing a rule, in advance, that people can not repeat what another individual has already said. b. Soliciting input from each participant first prior to allowing an individual who has already spoken to speak again. 5. Once the meeting has ended, distribute the minutes in a timely manner, generally within a week following the meeting. 02.25.10 | Leave a comment
Large Meeting (50+)
One potentially powerful interactive tool for meetings is the the mobile phone. With phones like the iPhone and Blackberry, among others, the meeting attendee can either use Twitter or Texting to communicate to the facilitator, a presenter or even each other. The phone can be used to take “straw polls” or sending “tweet” questions to the speakers, and other innovations. 1) Designate specific periods when the attendees may use the phone. 2) Request that the attendees only Tweet/Text the presenter/facilitator, (The rest can take place on scheduled breaks of at least 15-30 minutes or or special activities.) 3) To not distract the presenter/facilitator have someone else intercept the messages, sort or summarize, and provide them to the facilitator, 4) Ask a specific question of the attendees to Tweet/Text. The questions may include a “Meta” question such as “Would you like me to talk about the XYZ Process in more depth?” or a question pertaining to the subject matter, “What is your one biggest challenge as Sales Managers?” These can also be asked of a smaller group to discuss and send ONE response, such as those sitting at the same table or near each other. 5) If the present/facilitator asks to have participant Tweet/Text their questions, ask each table group (or cluster sitting near each other) to discuss and generate one questions from that group. This will ensure higher quality questions. 02.25.10 | Leave a comment
Controlling the Meeting
In meetings, keeping a list we call the “parking lot” is a fairly standard practice. As the discussion unfolds, we “park” there any items that arise that aren’t on the agenda, but which we believe could be important someday soon. Here are some tips for making your parking lot process more effective. 01.21.10 | Leave a comment
Articles
1. Meetings are to be limited to thirty minutes for a strategic meeting and eighteen minutes (like TED) for introductory or non-strategic meetings. There would be a massive countdown clock in every conference room. 2. Power points will be limited to “must-have” illustrations (graphs, visualizations, diagrams, etc.) The meeting can never start off with a power point – instead, it must start with the WHY? WHAT? HOW?, leading to discussion/presentation of facts/collaboration. 3. Meetings always end with two minutes of promise-record keeping. Action items are fully assigned, with delivery dates to be documented and placed into our calendars. 4. Meetings deemed “a waste of time” by the most senior person in the room will have a budget cost to the person who called the meeting. 5. NO ONE is to bring a laptop, black berry or cell phone into the meeting UNLESS there is a specific timing issue that requires them to be “online” during the meeting. 6. Meetings must have a moderator, who’s job is to manage agenda, time and documentation. The moderator must also attempt to manage cross talk, but senior members in the room are expected to help in this regard too. 7. Director level and up attendees can (quietly) leave any meeting in violation of the above rules. From Tim Sanders Advice Blog on Business, Culture and Spirit 11.24.09 | Leave a comment
General Keys
Provide an opportunity for everyone in the meeting to contribute to the meeting. This means that when there is an agenda item that calls to have the group generate ideas make sure everyone’s ideas are heard. When you discuss an issue, everyone gets a say. That way, when you make decisions, you’ll tap into the best thinking of everyone in the meeting. This is not just about being “fair,” but rather leveraging the talents and perspectives you have brought together. 11.24.09 | Leave a comment
Warm-ups
A warm-up for ideation sessions: Purpose: Time estimate: 3-5 minutes Step #1 The leader thinks of two everyday objects or situations. Hints: 11.24.09 | Leave a comment
General Keys
In meetings include processes that focus on both introverted approaches (“alone time” for generating ideas) and extroverted approaches (“group time” for generating ideas). Some people think more effectively by themselves with no distractions, and some like the stimulation of other people. Most of us need both. 11.12.09 | Leave a comment
Articles
Excerpts from lucafiligheddu.com, Jun 2009 “In my opinion, one of the worse part after a meeting is the phase when you need to put all pieces together and come up with an effective and useful meeting report and action items for the post-meeting activity.” “I found out that making a meeting effective is crucial for the activity after the meeting (and for your health). Here are five tips I learnt in the past ten years.” 1) Go straight to the point Sometimes I noticed, especially here in Italy, that lots of meetings are filled with discussions and chats completely out of the main scope… 2) Laptop, your best friend If you can, take notes directly on your laptop. (We at Productive Meeting do not recommend this) 3) No, I’m not texting! Use a program like Evernote (available for iPhone, too), you’ll easily figure it out. Evernote lets you take text notes and tag them, attach documents to them, attach photos (taken in real-time) and so on. 4) Real time actions have most of the standard product/service presentations on my Blackberry so it’s very easy for me to send them immediately. 5) Stand-up meeting? Best meetings are the shortest. 11.10.09 | Leave a comment
General Keys
The single most important thing to prepare for a meeting to be absolutely clear about the purpose of the meeting. There are two level of purpose to consider: The first is what you intend to accomplish in the meeting, and the other, higher level, is the reason to behind what you wish to accomplish. If you are unclear about the purpose our advice is to not have a meeting, it is unlikely to be productive and therefore successful. Ask the following questions (with clear and specific answers) to determine the purpose of your meeting: First level purpose: What do we wish to accomplish in this meeting? What do we want to come out of the meetings with? What is the output of the meeting? Higher level purpose: Why have the meeting? Why accomplish what you wish to accomplish in the meeting? You are having the meeting so that you _________? Do an input/output analysis of the meeting (Determine the inputs and outputs of the meeting). The output will indicate the purpose. 11.10.09 | Leave a comment
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Want to make your meetings more productive & engaging? This new blog is devoted to providing you with tips and tools to do just that…to help you meet less and get more things done. So if you lead meetings follow any one of our tips or tools and your meetings will become better… follow many of these tips and tools and your meetings will become dramatically better. We want people enjoy your meetings.