Finally my CEO issued Meeting Guideline to all managers and group leader this morning. The Guideline was about 2 pages containing what to do before, during and after a meeting. It also mentioned kinds of meeting: decision-making, review, information-sharing, celebration or announcement type of meeting.
The Meeting Guideline issued by CEO this morning was due to many ineffective meetings. As I observed, too many meetings that I attended were not effective. Agenda was not communicated. There are a lot of technical discussions occurred on the meeting that should occur prior to the meeting. People just said as he liked about the subject. The information shared not complete. We tend to cut one’s talk when someone is still talking.
The Meeting Guideline issued today is quite informative. There is a preparation before a meeting, things to do during and after a meeting. I am not going to cite all of them. What I want to stress on is just three things if we organize or attend a meeting.
Firstly, make sure that we have an agenda. The meeting which I always attend does not always follow this rule. No preliminary information about the agenda. The meeting invitation does not state about it. People are just invited to come, attend and give the schedule: date, time, and venue. If there is an agenda, it is always often stated on the meeting and people discuss about it. It is impossible to discuss many things at a time with relatively good results. We don’t have time to discuss many subjects for a 2-hour-meeting.
Secondly, make sure there is facilitator for a meeting; someone that will manage and arrange the talk during the meeting; a person that able to point out and control the direction of the meeting. He or she should manage whose turn is to speak or give time to someone or ask someone to speak on the subject discussed. He should maintain so that the participants always discussed the subject and focus on what to be expected from that meeting. We need this type of person on each meeting we attend. If not, we may be just waste a lot of time; we discuss something which there is no path forward or ending.
Thirdly, make sure that we take important notes during the meeting; something that required us to act. We want to have action as a result of the meeting, when such action to be taken, defining action required, who is to take, when must be done, and when is expected to be completed. Often, we forget this and we just enjoy talking during the meeting without being aware of the purpose of our meeting.
I hope when you have a meeting, you would remember these three things. Of course there are other things about a meeting, but the above I think will help each of us to get the most from the meeting we attend. (JM)
Tags: Meeting
