Vision:

 

Even though you may curse them, Business Meetings can be the most effective way to talk about issues,concerns or opportunities and get everyone involved up to speed quickly. That’s why they can be so effective. They help you gain consensus, and organize your direction.

But, having an effective business meeting takes some planning. You’ll be pulling people away from other activities and since they don’t want to waste their time they want you to have an effective meeting too!

Here are 6 things you need to do to have a productive business meeting.

1. Have an agenda. That means knowing all the issues you want to solve or the questions you  want to answer before you get together.

2. Invite all the decision makers. In the case of a sales call, the only person you want to  meet with is the final decision maker. But if the decision that needs to be made relates  to a department or larger group, you’ll need to invite the right people…

3. Have a set time and length for the meeting. Set the expectations with everyone when you  invite them. It could be 10 minutes, an hour, or even a full day. And as best you can,  absolutely stick to that time! This is important because you want everyone to show up  and be prepared at the same time, and everyone else wants to know when they can leave.

4. Be prepared. For a really important meeting, take a few minutes to write out the questions  you want answered, and the direction the meeting needs to go. We’ve all seen how easily a  meeting can get off track. And that gets frustrating.

5. Keep Control. Ok Lets say you called a meeting with all the other managers to discuss  some problems you have with late shipments going out the door. But you soon find that   the conversation turns into a discussion on how hard it is to hire the right people. While staff might be a real issue, talking about better hiring policies is not for this  meeting. Since you’re in control of the meeting you need to note that point, assign  someone to take care of it, and refocus the group on solving the issue of late shipments.

6. Follow up. Now, following up on every meeting may not be necessary, but if we keep looking  at our shipping example, you’ll want to follow up with all the people who were assigned   tasks, and make sure they got them done. Since you called the meeting on fixing the  problem, its up to you to guide the process.

The next time you call a meeting, or go to one, try to use, or look for these 6 steps. If you and your company can learn how to make meetings work, you’ll really have an effective organization.