Brilliant Tips On Carefully Managing Meetings To Maximise Available Time

March 25, 2010

Whenever you have a rather complex project, you may have to delegate certain elements to people within your organisation for best effect. If you have such responsibilities, never be tempted to micromanage as trust should be implicit; after all you have given them the trust to complete the task in the first place. Every now and again, it’s necessary to get everyone together to cover milestones or to discuss certain crucial points, to see that everything truly is on track. Whenever these milestones are looming, it is customary to call a meeting and these are seen as core business tools by the best organisations.

It is nevertheless absolutely essential that you practice effective meeting management if you want to ensure that you are being fully productive and that your company is maximising its potential. When a meeting is badly managed or is poorly structured, misinterpretation and confusion will reign and people’s time will be poorly used.

Understand the importance of managing your meetings and how a much better outcome could be enjoyed, leading to higher quality results, more motivated individuals, more meaningful decision-making, cross-pollination of ideas and so on.

Is your next meeting absolutely necessary – this is the first thing you should ask when considering the schedule. Are you clear about the desired outcome and is every potential attendee also aware of the ultimate goal of the meeting, allowing them to prepare adequately? Make sure that you do not invite people to the meeting who are not necessary for its effectiveness, bringing in only the essential people to satisfy the ultimate requirement. Schedule its time and place to minimise inconvenience, avoid needless travel time and do ensure that all resources are primed and ready.

When the meeting is under way, the chairman or chairwoman should always – if possible, be a strong minded individual who is very aware of time management. You can use online time management tools to help you marshal the meeting if necessary, using time tracking software to ensure that you do not spend too much time on individual elements of the meeting, at the potential expense of others. Maintain a businesslike atmosphere at all times and do not allow the meeting to stray to subjects not on the agenda. This is why a period is allowed at the end of each meeting for “any other business.”

Always make sure that you record all the pertinent details, ordinarily referred to as the “minutes” of the meeting. This could be recorded via audio for future transcription, or you could have somebody attending the meeting to take shorthand notes.

Schedule enough time for your meeting to cover all the salient points and use time management software to allocate individual blocks of time for each. Be very strict with your management of these individual blocks and you will most likely keep all attendees focused and attentive.

Meetings should never be an excuse just to “get out of the office” or to socialise in any way or form. Keep your meetings businesslike at all times and do not roll them into meal breaks. It is perfectly acceptable to enjoy a lunch together before or after a meeting, but everything has to be in its place.

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Michelle

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