Lets face it, most people spend their days in chaotic, fast-paced,time- and resource-strained organizations. Finding time for justone more project, assignment, or even learning opportunitynomatter how career enhancing or usefulis difficult to imagine. The 10-Steps series is designed for todays busy professional who needsadvice and guidance on a wide array of topics ranging from projectmanagement to people management, from business strategy to decision making and time management, from stepping in to deliver apresentation for someone else to researching and creating a compelling presentation as well as effectively delivering the content. Eachbook in this ASTD series promises to take its readers on a journeyto basic understanding, with practical application the ultimate destination. This is truly a just-tell-me-what-to-do-now series. Youwill find action-driven language teamed with examples, worksheets, case studies, and tools to help you quickly implement theright steps and chart a path to your own success. The 10-Steps series will appeal to a broad business audience from middle managersto upper-level management. Workplace learning and human resource professionals along with other professionals seeking to improve their value proposition in their organizations will find thesebooks a great resource.
At all organizational levels, business professionals are spending more of their time in meetings. So, whats the organizational benefit for all of the time and effort spent in these meetings? Much of that benefit is directly determined by the productivity of the individuals attending the meetings and how successful they are at accomplishing the meeting objectives.
Conducting highly effective and efficient meetings is an essential skill for all business professionals. So, whether your next meeting is a small-group, facilitative session or a global teleconference, the same planning and presentation principles apply.
So how do you go about developing and facilitating an effective, results-oriented meeting? 10 Steps to Successful Meetings provides the key information you need to accomplish this goal. You can jump to any step in process or start at the beginning. These steps include
- deciding if a meeting is necessary
- creating the agenda and identifying participants
- laying the groundwork for success
- identifying appropriate meeting facilities
- using a reliable process to facilitate the meeting
- building a game plan for success
- preparing for the meeting
- conducting the meeting
- managing difficult situations and participants
- evaluating success and following up.
10 Steps to Successful Meetings is part of ASTDs 10-Step series and was written to provide you with a proven process, quick reference tips, and practical worksheets to help you successfully plan and lead any meeting.
Take a moment to think about the most productive meeting that youve attended. What made it productive? Meetings have the potential to bring a group of participants together to act as a brain trust. This group can often have a profound impact on an organization or in crafting the policies or decisions that need to be implemented to better the organization, its processes, or the environment in which employees are expected to perform. With such power possible, a key tenet of productive meetings is that the right people are invited and that their time is used wisely.
Employees at all levels spend a significant portion of their working lives in meetings. The time spent in meeting rooms needs to be effective and goal oriented to offset the time subtracted from individual productivity. Business professionals need to know how to maximize a meetings usefulness and generate results in the process. Take a minute to estimate the cost for one excessive, nonvalue-adding meeting that wasted precious time and the organizations resources. How much do you think it cost the organization? Before answering, dont forget to include
- estimated hourly salary of each participant
- estimated hourly cost of benefits for every individual (some estimate that benefits cost approximately 33 percent of annual salaries)
- hourly cost of use of facilities
- hourly cost of use of equipment
- lost productivity by diverting resources to attend a meeting vs. working on other initiatives.
Got a number in mind? Now multiply that by the number of hours spent in the meeting. That can be a hefty numberespecially if the meeting is a weekly or monthly recurring event. Keep in mind that meetings do not have to be a big waste of time and money. Meetings go awry because leaders do not appropriately plan in advance and lack the skills to effectively guide and facilitate the meeting. By following 10 simple steps, you can create meetings that generate excitement, creativity, and innovation and achieve defined goals.
This book, 10 Steps to Successful Meetings, provides techniques for confirming when a meeting is necessary, offers suggestions on creating and developing an engaging meeting agenda, helps you identify the right participants to invite, supplies techniques for successfully facilitating groups, and offers strategies for handling difficult situations and participants.
Use the key steps in this book as needed. Whether you are leading a status meeting, team kickoffs, strategic-planning sessions, or problem-solving initiatives, the same steps to planning and leading meetings still apply. This book focuses on
- deciding if a meeting is necessary
- determining which type of meeting is appropriate