Meetings…how wasteful can they be?

How long do you spend in unproductive meetings wishing you were somewhere else getting on with your ‘to do’ list?

I don’t know about you but I find it very disappointing and frustrating attending meetings that are not well managed or planned.  What a waste of everyone’s time, which let’s be honest we can ill-afford to waste in the current economic climate.

Even more frustrating is when meetings have been arranged well in advance in your diary, you then check to confirm whether it is on or not as you get another opportunity on the same day as obviously you have to decide which takes priority. The person you contact makes out that the date was never fixed so you take it out of your diary and put in the other meeting and think nothing of it.  However, two weeks later you get an email inviting you to the first meeting again as the organiser could not organise the proverbial, in a barn!!  Oooh, makes me mad as you can probably tell!!

So, how do you ensure that the meetings you are involved in are productive and not time wasting, here are a few pointers that I find work well:

• Every meeting should have a start and finish time
• Every meeting should have a chairperson, a different person to take notes and a third person to watch the time
• Every meeting room should have an accurate clock in it
• Everyone who attends a meeting should contribute
• Every meeting over 30 minutes in duration should have an agenda
• Every meeting agenda should be issued at least 5 working days before the meeting, unless it is a weekly meeting with repeating topics for discussion
• Every meeting that involves the same people should spend five minutes as the end of every meeting asking:
• How well was the meeting chaired?
• How effective was the meeting in its use of time?What went well?
• What can we all do better at the next meeting?

When you have an initial client meeting it will probably only involve a maximum of four people (2 from both companies), but it is still good practice to confirm how long the meeting will be and what the key points that need to be covered are. Never assume that everyone is on the same page as you.  From a sales perspective you also need to know what the client’s agenda is and it is only polite to see how much time you have available.  It also shows that you are business focused, which will gain you greater credibility.

Thanks for your time, Suzanne Unsworth

http://www.rubusassociates.co.uk