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Meetings with Meaning
Jul 23, 2010 Ideas, New, Project Management Leave a comment
Posted by
george
Meetings – everyone has them, everyone hates them, and they tend to take up more time than the allotted 30 minutes or one hour we have scheduled in our calendars. Internal meetings are the worst; you start to talk about everything on your plate, giving the purpose for the meeting less priority. Not only does this cause you to lose your focus, it also renders the meeting “a waste of time”. Losing focus in a meeting can be detrimental to the purpose of the meeting.
SJG is no exception; we have in the past fallen into this trap of internal meeting hell. Our meetings would spiral down into production details of our clients work. We would lose sight of the big picture. We would forget what the meetings purpose was. We needed a framework for our internal meetings in order to regain focus on our what was important to our company. In short we needed to think of our team as a client.
Here is a set of tools and techniques that we came up with to apply to all of our internal meetings:
- Have a published agenda: Publishing the agenda to the team shares accountability for the meeting. An hour is not a long time, and an agenda will ensure each topic is addressed.
- Set the timer: Deadlines are your friend and meeting them provides a great sense of accomplishment once completed.
- Action items: What needs to be accomplished for the next meeting?
- Ownership: Who is responsible for each action item?
- Commit to next meeting! Another deadline that will ensure your team meetings are successful.
One of the outcomes was our bi-weekly blogs. We now apply the knowledge we have with our clients to the SJG team. What can you do to make your meetings more profitable and enjoyable?
