Get More from Meetings

 

Written by Jenny Catton

 

Ever feel like meetings are taking over your entire day? Well, you’re not alone. In his book How to Manage Meetings, Alan Barker says that most people, working in organisations, spend 60 per cent of their time in meetings. And love them or loathe them, meetings are an essential part of most businesses. They are crucial for getting things done, provide structure within a company and offer an environment in which to discuss problems or ideas. But when meetings aren’t managed properly, they take up valuable time without achieving any worthwhile results. So how can you make sure the meetings in your organisation are effective?

 

Before you hold your next meeting, think about the following:

 

Who needs to be there?

Having too many people at a meeting can cause discussions to ramble on for too long and it becomes difficult to make decisions. Limit the number of people at the meeting to only those that really need to be there.

 

Who’s in charge?

Even if there is no formal hierarchy between the people attending the meeting, it’s important that one person is in charge of running the meeting to keep it progressing efficiently.

 

What’s on the agenda?

Make sure you have an agenda of points to cover so that the meeting achieves its objectives and doesn’t wander off course.

 

Action points

It’s what happens after the meeting that’s often the important thing. Make sure someone keeps a note of all the action points that are agreed in the meeting so that they can be followed up afterwards.

 

Limit the time

Let everyone know what time the meeting will end and stick to it.

 

 

 

Categories: action points, catton, jenny, meeting, Meetings, nbsp, nbsp nbsp, people, time, written

Take Your Meeting Outdoors

 

Forget stuffy offices and boring boardrooms – if you want to get more out of your meetings, why not try a completely new environment by arranging a meeting outdoors? Whether it’s in a local park, on a bench in the grounds of your office or even a meeting on the move, outdoor meetings might not be as crazy as they first sound.

 

Okay, so it might be harder to take notes but if you want creative solutions to a problem or need to resolve conflict then an outdoor meeting might be much better than staying indoors. This is because the environment that we are in, whether indoors or outdoors; has a huge impact on our mental and emotional state. This in turn has an impact on the outcome of your meeting.

 

For example, if you are hosting a meeting straight after lunch, you might find that your colleagues are feeling sleepy and a meeting in a boardroom is unlikely to energise them. If you take the meeting outdoors instead, the fresh air will help them feel more awake and able to contribute. And if you’re trying to resolve conflict at work, then taking the meeting outdoors can have huge benefits as the natural environment has been shown to have a calming effect on people, meaning that they are more likely to be open to compromise than if you meet indoors.

 

The natural environment has also been shown to boost creativity – so if you’re looking for ideas for your next product or marketing campaign, take your colleagues outdoors and you’re likely to get better ideas than staying in the same boring office environment.

 

For more information about effective meetings, visit: www.mindtools.com

Categories: environment, indoors, meeting, meeting outdoors, Meetings, natural environment, Outdoors, resolve conflict

How to Make Your Workplace Happier and Healthier

Most of us are interested in our own wellness and wellbeing. This doesn’t stop just because we are in a corporate environment – in fact it can compound the necessity. When you start to think about health, and all of the issues that surround it, it can actually be easy to become a little obsessed with the whole thing. Once you are reaching your own health goals, you start to notice those of the people around you – and co-workers are no exception to this rule.

 

The interesting thing about co-workers is that we spend more time with them than we do with our own families sometimes. We start to care about them, and part of caring means that we are interested in their health and want to improve their long-term outcomes.

 

You do have to be careful about how you tackle the health of your colleagues, however, as it is very easy to be branded as a ‘health nut’ if you start to blab on about your new healthy lifestyle or diet. There’s also no point in telling people that they are unhealthy or doing it all wrong, as they will simply feel defensive. Nobody likes to feel criticised.

 

Instead, there are some small, unobtrusive things that you can do to help encourage a healthier workplace.

 

For example, one thing that you can do is to encourage walking meetings. Meetings are dull and boring at the best of times, often cramped inside a lifeless meeting room. Instead, why not invite your colleague out for a walk. You can walk and talk at the same time, getting in some vital exercise, fresh air and hopefully even some sun. Being outside in the fresh air can also spur on creative thinking. This doesn’t’ mean that you need to discard all notion of sit-down meetings, but when you get the chance, a walk outside (or even through the hallways if you can’t get outside) can do wonders.

Categories: colleague, employee, fresh, fresh air, health, Meetings, nbsp, walk

Get Your Employees in The Zone and Help Reduce Time Wasting

If you have any sense of corporate wellness, you’ll know the adage “Time is money”. However, knowing the phrase, and living it out in your workplace are two different things. Time is difficult to quantify and track, and as such, many small business owners mistakenly treat time as if it were a limitless resource. Yet, this is sadly not the case.

According to a recent McKinsey study, only 9% of executives are “very satisfied” with how employees’ time was currently allocated. Anyone who works in an office will complain to you how much time they spend on trivial tasks, such as responding to emails and attending non-essential meetings, so if your current time allocation doesn’t align with your company’s objectives, what’s the point? You can’t just tell your employees to use their time more effectively; you need to build a corporate culture that actively supports effective time management across the whole organisation.

Firstly, while multitasking is a real buzzword in the business world, researchers at Stanford have found that multitasking is an ineffective practice, as it leads to poor organisational skills, distraction and a lack of focus. In fact, employees are far more productive while they’re in “flow” or, as you may have heard it referred to, “in the zone”. Author and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines flow as a state of intense and effortless concentration on the task at hand, and so you need to foster a corporate environment of silence and privacy, and avoid burdening your employees with unnecessary emails and phone calls. Private offices are also preferable to noisy cubicle farms.

While removing the burden of busy work, try to also cut down the number of meetings you require your employees to attend. A Microsoft survey found that employees spend almost six hours each week in meetings, and 69% of employees feel like these meetings are unproductive. Only schedule meetings that are absolutely necessary and make sure each meeting has a specific purpose. This means you need to make a decision or solve a problem in each one. You should also have a clear plan as to what you will discuss, in what order, and the amount of time allotted to each.

Categories: flow, Meetings, Trivial Tasks