Excessive meeting = Ineffective meeting

 

Some executive believe that back to back meetings defines the modern business world. Some employees are forces to work on weekends and join meets which decrease their interest and thus result in ineffectiveness. Meetings are integral for organisation as different people are assigned different role to work and perform different job function. But spending much time meeting apparently is main reason for less production as employee are more focused on meets and less on work. As a rule, meeting should not be set as a main demand by executor.

Make meetings exception not rule. Value the results that organisation achieves, not the time spent discussing them. 

 

 

 

In meetings you spend  all that time and money but -

Most meetings are unproductive. In fact, executives consider more than 67% of meetings to be failure.

Harm in unproductive meeting ?

It wastes money more than $ 37 billion per year is spent on unproductive meetings.

It waste time there are $ 25 million meeting per day in the US. The 15% of organisations collective time is spent in meetings, a percentage that has increased every year since 2008. 

 

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/too-many-meetings-waste-your-time-and-cost-you-money/

 

TOO MANY MEETINGS !!!!

Everyone should carefully think about the oppurtunity cost of meeting..

Think before organising a meeting !!

 Need to know purpose of meeting...

 

Meetings are major distraction. They require many people to drop their work instead of performing their duties they have to attend these unnessary meetings.

 

Constantly asking people what they are doing can prevent them to work can cost loss of productivity.

 

"Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkel; carefully to enhance the dish not poured  recklessly after every forkful"

 

NEED TO CONSIDER....

Meetings are the way by which work can be planned collectively with the consideration and approval of everyone. Though it is responisibilty of the enterprenuer or presenter to gain the involment of everyone by seeting an agenda towards each and every participant can focus and lead it towards success and at the end can be called a productive meeting.   

   

 

 

 

Reason for unsuccessful meeting:

Some of the reasons for unsuccessful meeting is behavioural and systematic.

They are:

  Ø  Undecided purpose: This is one of most important decision to take before starting a meeting without having any objective, goal or agenda a meeting cannot be successful.

  Ø  Lack of preparation: The most important step that helps to make meeting effective. It is responsibility of an organiser to make sure that all the arrangements are done well. All the participant can be comfortable and most importantly can be able to understand.

  Ø The wrong participants: As if purpose is undecided and there is no preparation for meeting simultaneously there would wrong choice of participants. At that point inviting unnecessarily might be cause for failure of meeting.

  Ø  Interest of participants in meeting: The interest of participant can be known by the involvement of members in meeting. However, the behaviour such as tapping on laptop, side discussion, turning up late all these symptoms show there lack of interest in meeting and can further be reason for unproductive meeting.

  Ø  Poor participation: Lack of objective or less involvement by members can be reason for ineffective meeting. In addition to this, member’s views are very important to take forward an effective meeting so if they are not contributing well there would be inefficiency in decision work.

  Ø  Hidden objective:  While calling for a meeting when the agenda is stated but the motive is to overthrow than surely it cannot be a successful meeting.

To overcome unproductive meetings need to know:

1.  What are reason for the failure to prepare team members for meeting?  
2. What is important change that need to make to make it productive?
3.  Do there are right people at right places at our team meetings?

                                                                                                                               

At the meeting:



Set some ground rules. These ground rules need to be followed by all the participant to have efficient and productive meeting. They should be discussed time to time by the groups.

Some of the ground rules are:

·         All the members have equal rights and can participate.

·         The minority is given first priority

·          The decisions of majority is carried out.

·         All the topics need to be discussed as scheduled.

·         Decisions must be taken fairly and unprejudiced.

o   Start and end the meeting as scheduled.

o   At the meeting, an ice breaking activity should be performed to set the mindset of the group members to work in team

o   Introduce everyone with each other especially new comers and welcome them so that they can be comfortable in the meeting environment.

o   Summarise the purpose behind the meeting. Write on the blackboard about all the timely scheduled topics that need to be accomplished and discussed in meeting. This helps the participants to keep on track in meeting.

o   Encourage all the participants to give views on topics that need to be discussed.

o   Avoid topic drift keep focus on one topic and along with that avoid irrelevant comments and views made by members in meeting that try to drift the conversation further from the objective.

o   Avoid non-verbal communication. Moreover, the body language of members  give clues about the interest of the participants as need to have further discussion on topic in meeting or not.

o   The chairperson in meeting should conclude all the discussed and summarise all the details to sum up so that ask for vote or expression of consensus.

Use an “action sheet” that records all the details regarding the commitments made by the members to meet the deadlines.

Conclude the meeting:

      Review the action sheet and have check on the commitment made by the participants to ensure that people who were assigned work are working on that. Apart from this, include the time, date and location for the next meeting to avoid confusion.

Evaluating the meeting:

After the meeting discuss all the issues related to it that where improvements are required or any problem that need to be sort out before a next meet. Rotation of responsibility of any work to have efficiency and equal chance to perform duties. Have all the details of discussed topics with record of discussed survey tools on Internet and taken decisions.  



The agenda to make meeting effective:

One of the most important element to make meeting productive is creating effective agenda. There are some reason for importance of effective agenda:

·         Topics for discussion

·         Proper discussion on topic with presentation

·         Proper time allotment for each topic

·         Provides the main focus of the meeting and the main objective of the meeting.

All we need to follow is the following steps to have effective agenda to make meeting productive:

1.       Send an email describing about the meeting all the necessary details such as when and where it will be held. Moreover, in email it should be asked to accept or decline for the meeting and once they have agreed they have to attend the meeting.

2.       Ask the participants before 2-3 days of the meeting to bring their ideas by making presentation to make their views more clear and successful to understand and present properly.

3.       Once all the important members are invited and requested to bring their ideas it is responsibility of the presenter or leader to make a table describing the proper schedule for the meeting and allotment of time to discuss a particular topic.

4.       Send all the details of meeting schedule to each participants with reminder of time, venue, meeting goals and objectives, duration during what they will be allotted to speak and present their ideas.

 Effective meetings using technology  

electronic meetings one of the way to make meetings more effective

 

An effective meeting guides the person through various meeting steps to meet meeting objectives. Most meeting productivity software helps to store meeting agenda, objectives and related important information to store in electronic workspace as it is safe. Apart from this, this workspace can be mailed to participants prior to the meeting so that objectives can be clear among all the members of meeting.

During an electronic meeting, one can access the meeting agenda and goals from the workspace to have proper understanding and clarity about the topics that need to be discussed in the meeting. Some productivity software have reminder that reminds about the proper scheduled time to discuss the particular topic to avoid the timings run over time. In addition to this, in these electronic meetings software also allows to save all the decision by recording all the decision that were made during the meeting along with task assigned with their deadlines to be completed.

Benefits of electronic meeting

By executing electronic meeting to have effective and productive meeting there are some benefits such as:

o   All meeting material and information is located at one workspace

o   It ensures accountability as all the decision are recorded

o   Lifelong records of meetings are kept and stored

o   All the information is secure and accessible.  

planning and participating in productive meeting

Introduction: An overview on planning and participating in productive meetings

participating in meetings

  Meeting is gather together of three or more people who gather to share common aims and objective and discuss on planning to achieve organisation goal. Positive productive meetings means powerful process that any team can use to reclaim their  meetings.   

 Elements of meeting :

Content  It is knowledge, opinion, ideas, attitudes, information, experience expertise that the members bring in the meeting to discuss.

Communication  It is way through which people in meeting participate and work together to deal with objectives of organisation. this includes interest of members who have direct bearing on listening,participation and trust.

Structure It is the way in which both information, ideas and participants are organised to achieve objectives of the meetings. 

The simple ways to plan a productive meetings:

1. Set time aside to plan and prepare
2. Be clear on the purpose 
3. Engage with conflicts before meeting 
4. Take a note on key points 
5. Keep on track 

 

Effective meeting is a product of group presentation, open communication, time management, preparation and participation time management and clear understanding with participants regarding the meeting objectives and goals. The growth is further measured by the feedback provided on the assignments made and implemented decisions.

Steps to follow for effective management 

• Step 1 - Prepare an agenda that defines the purpose and objectives that list the activities or decisions need to be taken in meeting. Proper study need to be done before meeting with chats, diagrams, reports, maps with supplemented documents. There should be one participant who need to take note or record the meeting.To address each topic estimate time to avoid wastage of time.  
• Step 2 - Start the meeting on time by briefly determining the expected time to take particular time. Clarify the roles in the meetings of each participant like team leader, trainer, and facilitator. Introduce with new participant to old ones. Voting on recommendations, maintaining focus requesting reasonable extensions these issues included to adhere the company policies regarding confidentiality. 
• Step 3 - To have effective meeting always provide chance to every member to express their opinions. At the end of the meeting, assigning of research work to the  participants, develop strategies, collecting information and implementing information .moreover, this include establishing time frames and benchmark goals. Most importantly always perform work before their due date to avoid chaos.