by John J. Walters<\/p>\n
This is what Steve Tobak<\/a> says meetings do.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the full quote from his excellent article<\/a> (incidentally entitled that same thing as our parent site\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motto) is:<\/p>\n Meetings are how conflicts are resolved and plans are agreed upon. They are how critical strategic and operating processes are developed, managed, and to some extent, executed.<\/em><\/p>\n He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely on to something, here.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, if meetings were always ineffective time-sinks where nothing of any real value happened we would have phased them out by now, much like our own bodies are slowly ridding themselves of the appendix.\u00c2\u00a0 But we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, and unfortunately we never will.<\/p>\n Sure, technology may change, allowing us to update our meetings.\u00c2\u00a0 We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen a good amount of this already — from the conference call (which allowed us to bore each other from far away) to PowerPoint (which allowed us to keep attendees awake with flashy graphics and annoying sound effects).\u00c2\u00a0 But the basic idea remains the same: someone thinks they have something to say or discuss so they haul a bunch of their colleagues into a room at the same time and have at it.\u00c2\u00a0 Wonderful.<\/p>\n While information technology has developed to the point that meetings nowadays could be about as interesting as the movies<\/a> people paid good money to see back in the day, they usually are far from it.\u00c2\u00a0 Why is that?\u00c2\u00a0 Because leading a good meeting requires preparation and a willingness to stay on track that many people simply don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have.<\/p>\n Tobak lists some short, sweet, and to-the-point rules for running and participating in effective meetings (which I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t recopy because you can easily click here<\/a> if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re curious).\u00c2\u00a0 Basically, they come down to three things:<\/p>\n 1) Be sure to have a good reason to organize or participate in a meeting; make sure everyone who will be there knows what this is before they walk in.\u00c2\u00a0 Be punctual and brief.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember that an ounce of preparation is worth a lot more when everyone is finally assembled.<\/p>\n 2) If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re running a meeting, make sure to stay on topic and in control.\u00c2\u00a0 If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re participating in a meeting, make sure to defer to the meeting creator.\u00c2\u00a0 The same rules of etiquette apply here as elsewhere in the world, but are even more important as you are in a business setting.<\/p>\n 3) The meeting doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t end when everyone walks out the door.\u00c2\u00a0 Communication about what has been decided during the meeting is absolutely crucial to ensuring it gets put into action.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting this information out in a timely fashion is the meeting creator\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s responsibility; abiding by it is a task for everyone.<\/p>\n To sum it up: there are three equally important parts to a meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 Organization, execution, and following up.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not rocket science (few things are), but it is something that takes practice.\u00c2\u00a0 Luckily, we live in a time when technology<\/a> is always here to help us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John J. Walters This is what Steve Tobak says meetings do.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the full quote from his excellent article (incidentally entitled that same thing as our parent site\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motto) is: Meetings are how conflicts are resolved and plans are agreed upon. They are how critical strategic and operating processes are developed, managed, and to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}