Effective Meetings Begin With a Real AgendaWritten by Steve Kaye
Everyone knows that an agenda is key to an effective meeting. But an agenda that consists of a list of nouns, such as budget, software, and picnic, is useless. Here’s how to prepare a real agenda that puts you in control of meeting.1) Goal. Every real agenda begins with a goal that describes result wanted at end of meeting, such as: find a way to reduce travel costs by 10%. Ideally, this goal should be stated so clearly that someone else could use it to design a meeting that achieved result. 2) Outcome. This describes benefit of achieving goal, and thus tells why you are holding meeting. For example, benefit of reducing travel costs might be that you will keep spending within budget. 3) Activities. This provides a blueprint (or set of instructions) for meeting. Ideally, this contains descriptions of group activities that will help you and participants achieve your goal for meeting. Support this list with an estimated time budget for each activity.
| | More Time Wanted? Deal with Your Time-wasters Now!Written by Martin Haworth
Focusing your time to be as productive as you can has never been more important - yet many of us waste our precious time on employees, who frankly don't deserve it. They will never fit. Solving this problem for you will almost certainly be solving a problem for them - so don't be fearful. Want to know more - and how? Read on... Ever feel that you spend too much time shoring up performance of some of your people? More time with one or two than with some of others. And doesn't that just drain you? So think about those employees and how they are draining you and damaging energy you have. The energy that could well be directed much more productively. There are people in your business who just seem to be way off where you want them to be. They are behaving as they are and it's perfectly their right to be way they are. But not in your business. If it doesn't fit what you want, then you have two options (apart from just tolerating it, which I'm sure you don't want to do):- - Make very clear what your expectations are in words of one syllable and write them down. Manage it closely and be prepared for 2.
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