Holding Effective Meetings Is Easy

I’m sure you’ve experienced those typical “headache” meetings. You know the kind I’m talking about — the ones where the key players are running late, no one knows exactly why the meeting was called, and there is not a single agenda in sight. Everyone’s sitting around wondering, “Will this last 20 minutes or will we be here all day?” It’s impossible to tell!
Then, once the meeting finally gets off the ground, the real pandemonium starts. For instance:

1. You may hear some people yak incessantly on the sidelines, or one or two folks might jump on a soapbox and dominate the discussion.
2. The meeting topics bounce back and forth so many times that no one can keep track of what’s actually being discussed.
3. If a decision results, no one knows whether it was recorded or even whether anyone agreed to it.
   To counteract these frustrating problems, here are four techniques for running great meetings and following up afterward.

How Big Is the Problem?

Meetings held for the wrong reasons can waste the time, resources, and money of the business.

Not only do they have the potential to make the participants feel perpetually frustrated and unproductive, they’re also a financial drain. Just in the area of cost, have you ever tried to calculate the expense of holding even a single unproductive meeting?

If you multiply the number of people sitting in a room by an average hourly rate, and add the cost of employee benefits (overhead), you’ll see what I mean. And that’s the average cost for a holding a single meeting, not including expenses for any related travel, food, or equipment.

You can multiply this figure across the entire company to estimate the cost of meetings held per month and per year.

As you can imagine, holding meetings, especially unproductive ones, can be an expensive proposition!

How Can You Turn Your Meetings Around?

In contrast to the chaotic, unplanned encounters, the well-run meetings involve participants collaborating to produce a valuable outcome. They leave the meeting feeling that their time was really well spent. Making simple changes to the protocols for running meetings can shift the dynamics into a highly effective mode. To achieve excellent results, try the following:

1. • You really need the cooperation of several people at once.
   • The attendees must contribute to, or will be affected by, a vital decision.
   • You want various people to listen and respond to what others have to say.
   • Start on time; don’t reward latecomers by waiting for them.
   • Decide on times for each topic and stick to them.
   • Follow the agenda; avoid hopping around.
   • Discourage side discussions.
   • Set a “no interrupting” rule.
   • Stop, repeat, and clarify the points people are making.
   • Test for closure before moving on to the next agenda item.
   • Record decisions, action items, and due dates for each topic.
   • Summarize the key decisions and action items before closing.
   • End on time.
2. Be sure you really need a meeting before scheduling it.

Respect your colleagues’ busy schedules. Don’t schedule a meeting unless:

3. Send out a meeting notice and agenda well in advance.

Give your attendees plenty of advance notice — for example, at least a week. Also consider whether any of your invitees are likely to be unavailable on the chosen date. If so, you may want to postpone the meeting or seek alternates.

Be sure your meeting notice includes all of the key information: Include the 1) meeting date, 2) starting and ending times, 3) purpose, 4) attendees, 5) location with directions or access instructions, and 6) the proposed agenda.

This way, everyone will know exactly what to expect, what to do, what their time commitment is, and what’s in it for them!

4. Conduct the meeting using good facilitation techniques.

Here are some of the most effective techniques professional facilitators use:

5. Follow up afterward with summaries and action items.

After you’ve completed all of the hard work, you can avoid having everyone’s ideas and decisions simply melt away because no one sent out a good summary or bothered to track the agreed-upon assignments.

A summary doesn’t have to be fancy or very detailed to be effective, but it should contain enough substance to inform the people who weren’t there, for example. The summary should list 1) each topic, 2) the key points of each topic discussion, 3) all decisions made, and 4) action items and due dates. At the end, it may include the next meeting’s 5) proposed agenda, 6) date and time, and 7) location, if known.

With a little fine-tuning, you can convert your meetings from profit stealers into profit boosters. The process will transform the quality of group collaborations and breathe new life into your morale and productivity!

Copyright 2005 Adele Sommers; Sommers, Ph.D. is the creator of the award-winning “Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance” success program. To learn more about her tools and resources and sign up for other free tips like these, visit her site at http://LearnShareProsper.com

A Future for Your Business

Are you wondering what the future holds for your business? Whether you want to predict your future or prescribe an outcome of your choosing, you’ll have plenty of company!

Once we understand what we would like the future to represent, we’re better able to take the actions required to implement it. Ideally, that future will align with our passions, gifts, and what we (or our companies) can really be the best at doing. This article suggests a two-stage process to achieve this goal.

First, Identify Your “Hedgehog Concept.”

What can you be the best in the world (or at least in your community) at doing? This thought-provoking reflection is one of many from Jim Collins’ “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t.”

Collins’ team examined 1,435 companies to see which ones made substantial gains in profitability and sustained those improvements during 15 years or more. Since the 1970s, only 11 companies had risen from mediocrity to greatness and stayed there — topping many other prosperous firms that lacked the same staying power.

Of eight characteristics these companies shared, all held an unshakable adherence to becoming the best in the world at whatever they did. Each company committed to doing only those things and nothing else. This sometimes meant dropping their core businesses to pursue other things at which they could become the best in the world.

Collins and his team coined the term “hedgehog concept” to reflect a single-minded determination and focus similar to that of the hedgehog animal, attempts to do only one thing really well, such as curl up and roll. A hedgehog concept actually represents the intersection of three areas:

1) What you’re most passionate about
2) An understanding of what you could be the best at doing, and
3) A metric that drives your economic engine and helps you measure results.

Keep in mind that, according to Collins, this concept is not a goal, strategy or plan — but an understanding of what you can and can’t be the best at doing. Until you develop your hedgehog concept, you won’t know your true vision, mission or purpose.

Next, Define Your “Business Success Criteria.”

Do you have a crystal clear idea of the types of business undertakings that align with your gifts, talents, passions, and strengths? In this same context, have you thought about whether your business can be the very best in the world at doing those things?

If the answers are “yes,” you are in an excellent position to choose the ventures able to give you the greatest satisfaction and results.

If you’re not yet totally clear about the answers to these questions, developing a set of “business success criteria” can enable you to select worthwhile endeavors with much deeper insight, and thus set the conditions for successfully pursuing them. A hedgehog concept thereby represents part of the formula you can devise to identify and choose among your very best options.

Why is this so important? It’s not uncommon for people to wander into businesses, projects and professions opportunistically, which means that they often select the next available and convenient thing that comes along.

At times, this may be necessary for financial reasons. But unless we understand our underlying success criteria, we might not recognize the options that truly fuel and inspire us — those best suited to our passions and strengths.

Some of your criteria could be practical considerations, and others more lofty ideals. But all of your criteria will be essential to achieving balance, fulfillment, prosperity and higher contribution in your life.

In conclusion, a set of carefully crafted success criteria fueled by a potent hedgehog concept provides an unbeatable strategic advantage, and an excellent direction-finder for prescribing your future!

Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the creator of the award-winning “Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance” success program, and specializes in helping people align their life passions with their business purpose. To learn more about her tools and resources and sign up for other free tips like these, visit her site at http://LearnShareProsper.com