As I talk to entrepreneurs and work with company teams, I learn continually how much time they spend in meetings that they find at best unproductive and at worst distracting and counter-productive to the work they need to accomplish. This is a huge problem, a massive waste of time and resources, and an energy-sapping practice in many, many companies.
Even though almost everyone can tell you the problem, they are short of alternatives. “The meeting” remains the standard, expected way to do business internally. And there may be stature associated with being invited to meetings as well as despair when you are left out. So “the meeting” has great potential to be a politically charged, internally disruptive habit. If you add to that danger a meeting with customers, not just internal meetings, you can be in double jeopardy.
What if you could break the habit of unwieldy, unproductive, time-wasting meetings? What if you could turn your meetings into times when people make great progress in doing their real work, rather than taking time away from their real work?
I want to offer ten tactics to get more real work done in meetings and to make more money as a consequence.
In this post I will identify the ten ways. In subsequent posts, I will flesh out each one of these recommendations. Along the way, I invite you to comment and offer your own suggestions.
Ten Ways to Get Real Work Done at Meetings
1. Revamp Your Meeting Space
2. Agree on Rules of Engagement
3. Clarify Purpose and Desired Outcomes.
4. Prepare Aggressively
5. Use Collaborative Tools
6. Focus on the Gaps
7. Invite a Facilitator
8. Document Fast
9. Reduce Post-Meeting Work
10. Share Easily
Of course, the primary purpose of improving the productivity of meetings is not about the meetings; it is about business development! The Whale Hunters Process™ for sales and service is built on collaborative team work. Learn how to improve those work processes and you have more time, more energy, and more powerful teams to land and serve those new big accounts!
If this topic interests you, today would be a good time to subscribe to this blog. In the left side bar (near the top) you can see logos linking to LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. The last one, an orange box with white arcs in it, is the “RSS feed.” It stands for “real simple syndication.” Click on that and you will find instructions on how to get these next 10 tactics delivered to you as each one is posted.
I look forward to your comments and recommendations. For today, do you have meeting tactics that haven’t yet made it onto this list?
