3 Effective Meeting Strategies to Save Time and Ignite Innovation
How many meetings did you attend last week that lacked an effective meeting strategy? How often do you attend meetings that start late and end late? How many meetings actually…
How many meetings did you attend last week that lacked an effective meeting strategy? How often do you attend meetings that start late and end late? How many meetings actually resulted in a new idea or an actionable decision?
With about 11 million business meetings occurring each day, one thing is clear: Meetings are a mainstay of business culture. When they are conducted effectively, they inspire and ignite innovation, and lead to higher-performing teams and a stronger bottom line. When they are ineffective and irrelevant, they plague all of us with the notion that this time together was wasteful, costly, and inefficient.
Too many meetings fail to generate any meaningful return on the investment of our time and energy. Without effective meeting strategies in place, they undermine our productivity. Our meeting-intensive culture forces people to complete their work in the margins of their day—early in the morning and late at night—impacting their health, motivation, and work-life balance.
Something has got to give.
It is time for a meeting revolution.
Start the revolution by questioning the value of each meeting you attend, by preparing for your meetings, and by ensuring that the right people, and only the right people, are invited.
Instead of automatically accepting the next meeting request, pause and consider the meeting’s return on investment for you. Ask yourself:
Remember, every time you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.
As you prepare for your next meeting ask yourself the following questions:
Use the answers to these questions to guide you in planning and preparing for your next meeting.
To begin thinking about who to invite to your meeting, start by recognizing that there are four types of meeting attendees: the decision maker, the influencer, the resource person, and the executer.
An ideal meeting has each of these types of meeting attendees in attendance. Of course, one person can represent multiple roles, while more than one representative of a specific role may be required. For example, you may need three executers to complete a complex project discussed during the meeting.
To determine who really needs to attend the meeting ask yourself:
Without the right people in the meeting, nothing will be accomplished and everyone’s time will be wasted. Invite the right people and only the right people.
A decision maker is not necessary to start a meeting revolution. A meeting revolution starts with one person choosing to do something differently and then communicating with their colleagues and team why they have chosen a different approach.
Thirty-seven percent of employee time is spent in meetings. So, when you choose to lead a meeting revolution, you are not only ensuring that this investment of time and energy generates a meaningful and significant return on investment, but you’re also giving your team time back to do the work they’re good at, the work they’re hired to do, and the work that will grow the business.
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