Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Making Meetings More Efficient, Useful, etc.

First let me say this blog entry is inspired by @dariasteigman who tweeted the following earlier today:

Better, more useful meetings (introduce everyone --in context): http://bit.ly/Met5w. Some solid advice.

My (Twitter) response (I'm @rferrier, by the way) was to tell Daria that the favorite piece of meeting advice I've read is to hold your meetings in a place where everyone has to stand. When people have to stand, they: (a) say less; (b) edit themselves so they only say what's important; (c) make sure they don't repeat those who came before; and (d) are much more to the point with their comments. You end up "wasting" less time in meetings.

@dariasteigman tweeted back the following: "LOL So true. Flip charts can be useful too, b/c you can point to fact that 3 people have already said same thing."

Which got me thinking... we all have our tricks and tips for making meetings more bearable... er, I mean, efficient, useful, etc. And I think we'd all benefit from other's words of wisdom on this topic. So start sharing yours! Comment below...

1 comment:

Daria Steigman said...

Hi Robin,

Glad my tweet was inspirational. :)

Sadly, the biggest drivers of good meetings are things over which we often have no control (unless we're running the meeting): effective leadership|management|organization -- ideally by the person running the meeting or someone who is able to tactfully seize control and keep the meeting on point. That and balancing inclusiveness with relevance.

Best,
Daria