Module 10 meeting management meetings are often seen as a necessary evil of office life. Do people look forward to meetings and with good reason, too many meetings lack purpose and structure. However, with just a few tools, you can make any meeting a much better use of everyone's time. deciding if a meeting is necessary. The first thing you need to decide is if a formal meeting is necessary. Perhaps those morning staff meetings could be reduced to a few times a week instead of every day.
Or maybe they could take place over morning coffee and be more informal. And the next module we'll talk about some alternatives to meetings to if a formal meeting is necessary, divide your attendees into two groups, participants and observers. Let people know what group they belong in so that they can decide whether they want to attend. If you send out a report after the meeting, that may be enough for some people Using the Pats approach, we use the Pat approach to prepare for and schedule meetings. purpose, what is the purpose of the meeting, we usually state this in one short sentence. Example, this meeting is to review the new invoice signing policy.
This helps people evaluate if they need to be there. It will also help you build the agenda and determine if the meeting was successful. Agenda. This is the backbone of the meeting. It should be created well in advance of the meeting sent to all participants and observers and be used during the meeting to keep things on track. timeframe.
How long will the meeting be? Typically meeting should not exceed one hour. In fact, we recommend a 15 minute meeting starting at five past the hour and ending five minutes before the hour. If the meeting needs to be longer, make sure you include breaks or divided into two or more sessions. Building the agenda. before the meeting, make a list of what needs to be discussed how long you believe it will take and the person who will be presenting the item.
Here's an example. Once the agenda is complete, send it to all participants and observers, preferably with a meeting request and preferably two to three days before the meeting. Make sure you ask for everyone's approval, including additions or deletions. If you do make changes, send out a single updated copy 24 hours before the meeting. keeping things on track. before the meeting, post the agenda on a flip chart, whiteboard or PowerPoint slide.
Spend the first five minutes of the meeting going over the agenda and getting approval. During the meeting. Take minutes with the agenda as a framework keeping things on track continued. Although this informal structure will be sufficient for most meetings, more formal meetings may require more formal minutes. Your job as chairperson is to keep the meetings running according to the agenda. If an item runs past at scheduled time, ask the group if they think more time is needed to discuss the item.
If so, how do they want to handle it, they can reduce the time for other items, remove other items altogether, schedule an offline follow up session or schedule another meeting, no matter what the group agrees to make sure that they stick to their decision. At the end of the meeting, get agreement that all items on the agenda were sufficiently covered. This will identify any gaps that may require follow up and it will give people a positive sense of accomplishment about the meeting. Making sure the meeting was worthwhile. After the meeting, send out a summary of the meeting including action items to all participants and observers. anyone else who requires a copy?
Action items should be clearly indicated with start and end dates in progress dates if applicable. If all meetings were scheduled, these should also be communicated.