Every piece of music has a drummer setting the pace. It’s the same in meetings and it is not necessarily the chair. Who’s the drummer in your meetings?
Imagine if your meetings ran in half the time. What would that do to productivity?
It takes drastic change and a willingness to change to create effective meetings. But it can be done. Move some items to outside the meeting and efficiency can skyrocket.
A few years ago the term psychological safety would never have been used ain a discussion about meetings. Now it’s an essential part of every meeting whether it is spoken about or not.
Leading a meeting and playing chess are strategically similar Would you like to lead a meeting as strategically as Beth Harmon plays chess? Would you […]
Virtually every meeting can take less time than it does. There are simple strategies that shorten the meeting and make it better.
Robert’s Rules of Order is one of the most frequently cited and least understood procedural frameworks you’ll encounter — particularly in Australian meetings
Adding a bit of formality has the potential to improve your meetings – but you have to do it in the right way. It needs a really good chair. Don’t be put off by the nay sayers. Formality on your meetings can be biggest productivity boost you could apply.
The biggest barrier to better meetings, is the boss, or chair, who wan’t consider another approach. They to get out of the way and let other people with new ideas have a trial meeting – you may be surprised at what happens.
If you ask this question, chances are no-one will know, or there will be a range of answers from the boss, the PA the minute taker, or most commonly – Fairy GodMother. And that’s the problem. No-one knows whose job description says “organising meetings”
Ever been in a situation where a very insistent person does not agree with how a meeting is heading and refuses to accept the will of the majority? Their tactic is to keep asking questions that are designed to rattle the group so the discussion and decisions go their way. An external impartial chair can manage this.
Leaders who see their role as to serve the meeting are always admired an respected. They run effective meetings which generate huge results
A point of order is a tool, which is used to draw attention to a breach in rules, an irregularity in procedure, the irrelevance or continued repetition of a speaker or the breaching of established practices or contradiction of a previous decision.
En bloc simply means “as a whole”. It’s a very effective technique to deal with a range of items (which have disagreement) as one motion or one decision.
Meeting minutes are not just a record. They are a management tool. They contain decisions that people need to act on, actions that are assigned to specific individuals with specific timeframes, and information that participants need to take forward into their other work. It should be a policy to send the minutes out within 48 hours
Here’s a confession: most meeting minutes are written the wrong way. Not because the minute-taker is incompetent — quite the contrary, many are remarkably capable people who work incredibly hard. But they’re using the wrong system for modern minutes.
“To lie on the table” is a formal procedural motion.
The purpose of the motion is to defer further consideration of the matter currently before the meeting, without setting a specific time for when it will be revisited.
Every person makes their decisions differently. But some rely heavily on facts, and others on opinion.
Not Another Meeting! Smarter Meetings Start Here: Six Keys That Actually Work Virtually everyone in the working world attends meetings. Staff meetings, management meetings, planning […]
If a machine broke down you’d get it fixed. Why not fix your meetings? Let me ask you something. If a piece of equipment […]
A senior executive sat across from me recently – impressive career, multiple board roles, significant responsibility – and made a remark I haven’t stopped thinking about.
“Some people,” she said quietly, “justify their salary by having meetings.”
It was said without malice. She wasn’t ranting. She was making an observation she’d reached after years of watching organisational behaviour from the inside. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe she’s identified something genuinely important. Meetings are sometimes just part of the job.
Is your team so focused on one person’s opinion that they’ve stopped thinking for themselves? It’s called sunflower bias. Walk through a field of sunflowers […]
Opinions dressed up as facts is one of the biggest traps any group can make in decision making