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Cures for the common meeting-itis

Meetings seem to be a way of life. Whether in person or on the phone, are you sick of meetings? Do you find yourself wondering how much you actually get done? Are there lots of people discussing, but little decision-making or action-taking? This is a hot topic showing up in my personal conversations and in blogs from Seth Godin and Sasha Dichter recently. So, even though this is a little long, I thought it worthwhile to share some of their tips along with my own so that your meetings CAN be productive.

1. Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour?
2. Have an agenda and require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don’t, kick them out.
3. If in person, remove all the chairs from the conference room.
4. Stress punctuality. If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a $10 fine to the beverage fund.
5. Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you’re done. Not your fault, it’s the timer’s.
6. The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within 10 minutes of the end of the meeting.
7. Have a poster board or simple online page that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.

One ring-y ding-y… two-ring-y ding-y…calling all conference callers
Conference calls can be entirely different beasts. Have you ever been on a conference call and suddenly everyone is silent? Do you know what to do? If you conduct much business by phone, here are your Magic 8 ideas to consider:

1. When silence starts to set in, start cold calling on people. This has two effects: making sure everyone gets a chance to speak; and creating an incentive for people to speak up – for fear of being called on.
2. If somone is dominating the conversation, the leader gets to step in and facilitate the meeting.
3. If you like to talk, take a breath and give someone else a chance every once in awhile.
4. Make it a regular practice that when an important question comes up, you go around the call and ask everyone to say something
5. Have someone who isn’t “in the room” lead the call. This keeps them engaged and validates that just because they’re on the phone doesn’t mean they are less important.
6. Never equate silence with agreement. It’s bad enough to do this in person; worse still on the phone.
7. Keep calls short. More than 30 minutes on the phone and you’ve probably lost the person dialing in.
8. Keep groups small. Less than 4 is ideal, but 6 or fewer seems to work.

It’s really, really tough for someone on the phone to stay engaged. And, if people on the phone aren’t engaged (if they are a listener) or not getting feedback (if they are a speaker), you’ve missed the entire point of a meeting - to inform people who are on the call and, often, to get their feedback or make a decision. Anyone want to meet?