Business Meeting Management
Business Meetings can be notoriously unpopular because they take up valuable business time of key personnel. It is also a fact that there are good business meetings and there are badly run business meetings. Business Meetings can be an excellent use of time when they are organised correctly. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true, and it seems that a lot of valuable time is wasted on poorly run business meetings.
This document explains several ways that business meetings can be managed more effectively. It is important that each participant commits fully to the business meeting. Conduct your meetings as you would have others conduct the business meetings that you attend. Conducting an effective business meeting or being a good meeting participant--is all about being considerate of others.
Be prepared and ensure that all the participants can be as well informed of the purpose of the business meeting.
Distribute the business meeting agenda a day before the meeting and make sure everyone has access to any relevant background materials. Attendees of course, have an obligation to understanding the agenda and background materials and arriving at the meeting prepared. If the business meeting organizer has not provided adequate information about the objectives of the meeting, the participants should take the initiative to ask. No one should arrive at a meeting not knowing why they are there--and what is supposed to be accomplished.
If there is nothing to put on the agenda, the business meeting organizer should ask themselves whether there really needs to be a meeting.
Stick to a schedule according to the agenda.
Start the business meeting on time and end it on time. Starting on time requires discipline by the organizer and the attendees. Arriving late shows a lack of consideration for all those who were on time. But if all participants know that the organizer is going to start the meeting right on time, there is a much greater likelihood that everyone else will make the effort to be punctual.
Finishing in a timely manner is also very important. If everyone agreed that the meeting would last an hour, the meeting should not run any longer than that. Keeping the agenda realistic is important. Lastly , if only 45 minutes are required to accomplish the meeting objectives, the meeting should end after only 45 minutes. It would be a waste of everyone's time to let it go on any longer than that you would also have lost respect from the participants.
The time for which the meeting is scheduled is also important. Scheduling regular meetings at inconvenient times especialy at the end of a working day can have a very negative impact on morale. Emergencies are a reality for most organizations and may necessitate meetings at odd times, but routine meetings should be scheduled at a time that is reasonably convenient for the participants.
Stay on topic do not wander off the subject. Most groups have at least one person who tend to go off and tells stories during the meetings. Whether this is the organizer or one of the participants, all business meeting participants have the responsibility of getting the meeting back to the agenda items. telling stories can be very useful if it is being used deliberately as a coaching or teaching tool.
Don't hold unnecessary business meetings.
Assess how often routine meetings really need to be held. For example, if you have daily staff meetings, how productive are they? Can they be held less frequently? Or, perhaps, can they be held standing up someplace and kept to a few minutes? Staff meetings are crucial vehicles for maintaining good communication in the office, but it is important to find the right balance between good communication and productive uses of time.
Close up business meetings with a clear understanding of the next steps and who is to take them.
If any decisions were made at the meeting the meeting Chair person should clearly summarize what needs to be done and who is going to do it. If the chair person fails to do this, one of the participants needs to speak up and request clarification of the next steps. This is crucial. If the participants leave the meeting and no one is accountable for taking action on the decisions that were made, then the meeting will have been a waste of everyone's time.
These simple steps can go a long way in making business meetings more productive. Implementing them is not always easy, as they require preparation and discipline, but doing so can make a huge difference to the productivity of your business the participants should leave the meeting looking forward to the next meeting.
email: theresa@businessmeetingsmalta.com, the free conference venue finding company and DMC -Destination Management Company in Malta
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