Agendas Make Meetings Productive
Having an agenda template that works well for you, week in, week out, creates a consistency which gets your people bought into the process. Delivering an efficiency and effectiveness which makes the most of the valuable time you have together. Key points to note are:- Circulate
Share your agenda in good time, well before your meeting (with reading material for preview). This gives time for review, preparation and challenge.
RolesIn a meeting there are various roles to be taken on from the start. Chair, notetaker, facilitator, reviewer and other, more specific roles. These should be clearly stated on the agenda in advance of the meeting.
Items for Discussion
Items on your agenda need to be selected carefully and only be relevant for the grouping of people who get together. Time is precious, so make sure that when together, only things which need everyone's input are given time.
Set TimingsGet clear on your agenda just how long the meeting will last and how long will be devoted to individual items on it. This gives clear indications of what will happen in meeting.
Ground Rules
Within your agenda will be some rules of how the meeting process will work. It is important to set standards of behaviour which eveyone signs up to.
AOB
Often included in agendas, this item is one that really should not be there. Good preplanning before the agenda goes out should mean that all items are included at that point and, where dispute occurs, the
meeting lead takes a decision. AOB can easily take a meeting off the rails and lead to missing time agreements.
Action Points
As the meeting progresses there will be action points that individual meeting members will be accountable for. By having a spot on the agenda for a quick review, prior to circulating these in writing, everyone will be clear on what is expected of them.
Parked Items
Sometimes during a meeting, items arise which whilst important, are outside the scope of that particular meeting. So by both 'parking' them during the meeting, thus validating their importance, and having a specific point to check the next steps for them is clear, they do recieve attention. This then allows the meeting purpose to be maintained.
Next MeetingBy ensuring the date of the next meeting is an agenda item, this serves three purposesIt indicates to the meeting attendees follow up meetings
It gives an indication of when agreed action points from the meeting are likely to be required
Finally, it reminds the person responsible for the agenda to agree a clear date during the meeting - if not, it is likely to slip.
Meeting Review
Your agenda should also be an ongoing learning tool. As such, and to ensure your meetings truly make a difference, there is a real benefit in reviewing how things have worked in the meetng - for all participants. Agenda
it.
Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide, mainly by phone, with small business owners, managers and corporate leaders. He has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, http://www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com/managing_meetings.html
(Note to editors. This article may be edited for use in your publication or newsletter as long as a live link to the website is included)
...helping you, to help your people, to help your business grow...
Related News
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Integrity... Should It Matter?
In our fast paced work culture, manned by technology savvy generation in a globally competitive environment, quality and productivity became the battle cry of corporations to stay in business. Though this is not necessarily bad, an equally important ingredient to succeed is seemingly taking the back seat.
Miracle Max On Market Breakthroughs
Successful enterprise building requires seven elements. These are:
5 Steps to Identify Core Processes
Part Two of Creating Well-Defined Processes Series
Sweet Parting Of Ways
Why settle for bad feelings when your employee leaves the firm? Human resource managers can help to sweeten the occasion during the exit interview, and get valuable information to help the company in the new knowledge age.
Getting Your Employees Attention Back to Work
It is 9:00 am on a Monday morning. Do you know where your employees' attention is? Is it on work?
The Email Trap
If you sit at a computer for most of the day, it's tempting to constantly check your email to see what's new. But that's a time management disaster if you're trying to make progress in your business. Resist the temptation. Here are some tips to help you get that time eating monster under control.
Why Soft Skills?
The industrial age is over. Organizations still stuck in the industrial age business models are going out of business very fast. Technology is only as good as the people using it. That is the clear message of the new millennium. The knowledge era is supported by tapping into the immense power of the humans to think creatively, find unconventional solutions to add value, improve productivity, and find answers which will make life and work more valuable to the society.
Making a Decision to Outsource: Driving Factors
Most executives view offshore outsourcing most of all as a source of cost reducing. The greatest savings are expected to come from lower labor cost and reduced project timelines. However offshore outsourcing also creates new challenges and expenses for the organization involved. Those may include vendor selection costs, legal costs, costs of transition and many others. That is why despite the evidence of possible major up-front cost savings many outsourcing vendors have yet to prove that they are able to provide positive ROI in a complex project.
DIVERSITY is a BIG word -- With A HUGE Business IMPACT
Second thought! Just in case. YOU or someone you personally
know may fit the following picture of success which may carry
too much risk for comfort.
Can What Someone Does Off-hours Affect Your Business?
Q: How much do I have to worry about what people who are part of my far-flung "virtual" corporation do when they're not working directly for me? I can't share too many details because the situation is touchy, as you might expect, but basically I have someone working for me as a writer, contributing material for my blog, and I have been hearing that he's writing some pretty far out, offensive material on other sites. Do I need to worry about it?
Out of Control?
There are papers on the floor, across the desk and resting on the keyboard. Piles of files are all around. Magazines, newspapers?you name it. Just about anything can be found in this office. You've seen it in your own organization. You know what I am talking about.
Delegate Tasks to the Right Person
SELECTING THE RIGHT PERSON: To whom should tasks be delegated? Selecting the right subordinate to do the work is an evaluative process, and managers must be able to identify individuals both capable and willing to handle responsibility.
What Every Manager Should Know About How to Enhance the Motivational Climate of the Workplace
It has been well documented that employees' productivity and job quality increase when we are made to feel welcomed at work. In other words, when the motivational climate is enhanced to meet their needs they produce quality work at the 100% rate.
Creative Writing - business principles produce more quality work, faster
Maximization methodologies have long been used in business to produce quantities of quality ideas, faster. Creative writers who want to rapidly produce quantities of quality work should apply these same principles.
Hiring for Success
Hiring someone new to work in your business is one of the most critical decisions a business owner makes, although it is not always given the justice it deserves. If a position is vacant, or additional staff are needed, recruitment decisions are often driven by the pressure to get someone in quickly, rather than waiting for the best person to fill the job. Lack of proper and systematic recruitment process can also result in a high cost to the business.
Examining the Relationship Between Employee Satisfaction and Customer Satisfaction
Researchers have undertaken numerous studies to look at the connection between customer and employee satisfaction. A majority of these studies were able to uncover a correlation between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction and profitability.
Tales From The Corporate Frontlines: Job Security in Todays Workplace
This article, Job Security in Today's Workplace, is part of AlphaMeasure's compilation, Tales from the Corporate Frontlines. It tells the story of a manager who decides to look for ways to bolster the morale in his company when it crashes after an extensive layoff.
Middle-Aged Managers, the Forgotten Digital Divide
The digital divide is defined by the role computers play within widening social gaps in our society, as the condition of one group having an advantage over another group in regard to computers, technology skills and Internet access.
Introducing the 15 Frameworks of Successful Self-Employed Professionals
A framework is a way of thinking, a point-of-view, a perspective on something. Here are the 15 frameworks of the successfully self-employed professional. You'll find some of these to be radical and foreign. Don't let that stop you! Try them on; see what you learn from them.
Quick Tips On Bringing Out The Best In People
Want to bring out the best in people?
|
