I’m not an expert on work organisation.
But over the years I have developed my own personal checklist to make meetings more fruitful.
The points therefore do not replace the “best practices” found in literature about the perfect meeting (such as establishing a clear goal, and things like that), which remain valid.
These are just the 5 expedients that have been most useful to me.
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Table of Contents
Set an end time
No more never-ending meetings!
According to the number of topics on the agenda, set an end time immediately and force yourself to stay within the limits (by the way: you sent a schedule to all the participants in time, didn’t you?).
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Take notes and take them well!
Or appoint a person at the beginning of the meeting who will be responsible for:
– drawing up a SCHEMATIC draft (not too long)
– reading it again with everyone at the end of the meeting to check that it contains the essential points
– distributing it to all participants after the meeting (by the next day, not two weeks later!)
Side note:
The more time goes by, the more it seems to me that young people don’t like taking notes. In addition to evaluate their behaviour at school, teachers should evaluate this aspect and make it count heavily on the average grade.
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Use the ENOUGH CRITICS Method
That’s how it works:
when someone proposes something, it is forbidden to comment with a criticism, positive or negative: whoever wants to comment something, must do so with a CREATIVE TIP, that is proposing his version.
Let me give you an example:
In the meeting Luca presents a new landing page to generate leads whose title is:
“New method to increase orders”
Stefano can’t say:
“I think it would be even better if the title was more specific”
because this is actually a criticism, although disguised as a suggestion.
And Anna can’t say:
“Well, I like it”
because that too is a criticism, albeit disguised as a positive comment.
A CREATIVE TIP is to PROPOSE another version, like:
“New method for doubling orders”
or
“New method for doubling orders in three weeks.”
or
“How to double orders with the ABC method”
At the beginning it is very hard, because it’s a RADICAL change that forces everyone to provide a concrete creative contribution.
But it helps to get better ideas out of the meeting than those that came in.
For today I’ll stop here.
Tomorrow the last two points of the checklist.
If you like this kind of food for thought, know that these are one of the many topics that you can find more in depth, in our B2B Club Newsletter, the monthly paper newsletter for the owner of SMEs and marketing or sales managers.
