What happens after a meeting is over? Do you have quick and easy ways to share the outcomes and next steps, both with people who were there and others with a “need to know” who weren’t there? Meetings are a huge waste of time if you don’t share the outcomes and follow up on the […]
In order to succeed as a young entrepreneur, it’s all about community. I joined a former startup venture with the credo: My most valuable asset is my network. And it was this value that drove the greatest successes of that entrepreneurial adventure. My team and I always joked that what we lacked in age, we […]
The Whale Hunters Expert Series call on Wednesday, November 17, features a discussion of how to sell large contracts to the biggest of all whales–the United States government. My guest is Major General Vincent E. Boles, U.S. Army, ret., who was commissioned second lieutenant of Ordnance in 1976 and was selected as Brigadier General in […]
How many times have you come out of a meeting with more work than you had before you went in? And just having lost an hour or two or more of time in which to get it done? It’s no wonder busy people hate meetings! The answer to that dilemma is to change the way […]
Documentation of meetings causes major delays in action at many companies. The larger the company, the more likely it is to have rules about meeting minutes or records: who is in charge of producing them, who needs to approve the final form, how they are circulated, where they are stored, and so forth. Smaller companies […]
The delightful phrase repeated by a recorded voice in the London tube warns passengers to “mind the gap.” If you speak “American,” typically you find this quaint and amusing. We of course would say something more foreboding and less memorable: Warning: Severe injury or death is possible if you cross this line. The English are […]
In a traditional meeting format, everyone takes their own notes, or someone is assigned responsibilities as a note taker, maybe circulating or posting “minutes” of the meeting. I have worked with companies in which the process of getting meeting minutes approved for publication took weeks! In the meantime, people forget what was decided or what […]
I’ve been blogging about how to reduce the time you spend in meetings and how to make the meetings that you need more productive. If your entire organization goes on a mission to eliminate many meetings and to improve the outcomes of meetings that you choose to conduct, you will make more money. You will […]
In this series on how to get real work done in meetings (and make more money!), the third principle is to clarify the purpose and desired outcomes of your meeting. Why are you meeting? What do you want to accomplish? Too often very little thought goes into calling a meeting. Is there something you want […]
Advice on how to structure business meetings with rules of engagement.
How many times do you sit around a conference room table with several other people to hold yet another boring, unproductive meeting? Conference tables were not designed to foster real work; they are only good for certain kinds of discussions. The fact of the table limits how people work when seated around it. You might […]
Introducing a series of ten blog posts about making meetings more productive to increase the time available for sales and service.