Kill bad habits [3]: strengthen your meeting best practices

Please read “Kill bad habits” before starting to read this post.

Excerpt from the post “Kill bad habits”:
[3] Never respecting a meeting time schedule
and a strict agenda.

It starts with people coming late to the meeting. Accepting this is always a bad start. There is a long list of the wackiest excuses for being late. The point is that being late to a meeting is disrespectful to everyone in the room. I remember a GM who was always late to the meetings he had to attend. Worse, he did not pay great attention when in the meeting, only offering a few statements here and there, and he would then leave early before any decisions were made. Can you imagine that he is now leading a major subsidiary?

For centuries, there have been best practices, basic and more sophisticated ones, of holding effective meetings. In some companies, these best practices or rules are put on paper. Perfect. The unfortunate truth is that they are not always respected.

A few examples of poor meeting etiquette: no well defined goals and roles, lack of preparation, last minute rush to prepare documents, review meetings poorly led, vague action items, no action owners and no target dates. What about your experience?

You’ll tell me that you pretty well know how to run a meeting? OK, then let’s take a few minutes and let’s check a few points together.

→ Evaluate your last meeting. How was it?

Meeting was the only way to address
the issue efficiently:
Yes/No

The clear agenda had no surprises
or hidden stuff:
Yes/No

Only the right people concerned with the
specific topics participated:
Yes/No

What to do on each topic was unmistakable:
Yes/No

Adequate timing was allocated to each topic:
Yes/No

No “various questions” were put at
the end opening the way to long
minutes of wasted time:
Yes/No

Each agenda topic was easy to understand
and was shortly described:
Yes/No

Documents were sent on time to be reviewed:
Yes/No

Looking to strengthen your meeting best practices within your team or companywide? Simply ◊contact me◊.

© Nick Paulus, 2008

 

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