Meetings are a hot topic today! Sales Gravy (People Love to Meet) and Seth Godin (Getting serious about your meeting problem) both covered the topic and both got me thinking. The most experience I have had with meetings was my short stay at my company’s corporate office. Although it wasn’t in the job description, I am pretty sure my job was to attend meetings. It was brutal. We met all the time. I had to take some action or I would never get any work done. For starters, I got back to the field and decided to never return to another corporate office!
I did learn from a few leaders who managed to use meetings for good instead of evil.
- If you needed to meet with our COO his administrative assistant asked you to fill out a short form that simply asked for an agenda and objective. You turned that in and, from that, he decided to accept or decline a meeting.
- The VP of Sales banned all meetings with sales people Tuesday-Friday every week. Do not bother the salespeople when they should be selling was the message loud and clear.
- Then, one co-worker only attended meetings held on certain days each week. This eliminated the impulsive “let’s get together without a real plan” meetings.
- Finally, one leader ADDED a meeting. Yes, I said added. This was a very valuable meeting each week. It was a status meeting on all the many things happening at once. It was short, rapid-fire and kept us all on track…and accountable.
- Recently I met with a global head of L&D for a large corporation. He had a meeting template that he filled out during our meeting with next steps and objectives for those next steps. Typically, as the salesperson I am doing this – this was the first time I saw a prospective client take that action, also. By the way, you can’t believe how much he has gotten done in a short time at this company!
- I had one leader who called impromptu meetings. He was such a strategic thinker and would call these meetings to share a current flash of brilliance. These were always worth the time and set us on a better path immediately. So, if you call people away from what they are doing, make it worth it.
Meeting is an art form. Not having meetings can be as detrimental as having too many bad meetings. I am almost done reading Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni. It’s a fun story so far and does get you thinking.
Too much of our time is spent in meetings to not make some effort to make them more productive and energizing.
Please share your experiences with good meeting practices.
Jill
