Are Your Meetings Producing Results?
Why do you hold meetings? Is it to communicate what is going on in the organization? If so, a well-written memo might be a good substitute. Or maybe a series of short texts each containing one of the important ideas might work.
Most meetings are held to share information, collaborate on solutions and determine what the next steps to be accomplished are. It is this last part where most meetings don’t live up to their expectations.
Generally organizations are good at getting together to share information and then relatively good at collaborating on the solutions. But most break down when it comes to the follow up on the next steps.
A simple tool to remedy this is to have one person at the meeting accountable for taking notes regarding WHO agreed to do WHAT by WHEN.
Every time someone makes a commitment to do something the person taking the notes should interject to clarify that specifically WHO agreed to do specifically WHAT by specifically WHEN. Then confirming it with the group and then writing it down that makes a difference.
When the meeting ends the person accountable for taking the notes must then circulate the Who-What-When notes to all attendees of the meeting.
It is at this point that the person that is accountable for the project must step up and take accountability for making sure that the project remains on time and on budget by holding the individuals to the commitments that they have made. Weekly check-ins with each of the participants are not too frequent if you want to se the project succeed.
Don’t spend all of the time and money to hold a meeting if the follow up and execution is not going to be there. Implement a simple Who-What-When process at all of your meetings and see how much more productive your meetings and your organization becomes.
Improve your meeting productivity today!
[themecolor]Dave Baney is the founder and CEO of 55 Questions, LLC. We work with successful top executives with a driving ambition to crush their competition. We help CEOs and Entrepreneurs improve alignment, communication and accountability throughout their organization. [/themecolor]
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