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Jay Whitenoreply@blogger.com2008-07-09T11:05:53.533-05:008 Ways to Avoid Unproductive Meetings</h3><content type="html"><div id="write"><h7 class="write">Written on 7/09/2008 by Aaron Stannard, editor of <a href="http://blog.smartdraw.com/">Working Smarter</a>.</h7></div> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanmaiz/257642964/"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_dH0q9hvpVHg/SHQFPn8n1kI/AAAAAAAAB60/KBFJTVRZT9c/s400/bored.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220803634008675906" border="0" /></a>Have you watched CareerBuilder.com’s hilarious "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gulba1SQTYw">Donut Jungle</a>" commercial? The one where naïve employees are lured with delicious deserts into attending pointless meetings? The commercial is hilarious because it contains a hint of truth: many meetings, especially in larger organizations, are utterly pointless and devoid of usefulness. The phenomenon of chronic, pointless meetings is also known as the <a href="http://www.stangbangers.com/Dilbert_MeetingMadness.jpg">Dilbert Meeting</a> in some circles. Dilbert Meetings happen every day, wasting people's time and patience. Meetings can be quite productive, but most organizers simply don’t take the steps to guarantee that a meeting will be useful. Here are 8 things you can try to help make your meetings more productive: <ul><li>Have a clear agenda What do you want to cover during the meeting and why are you holding it? Do you want to go over new ideas, or perhaps review some old ones? Prepare a clear agenda of things that you want to discuss during the meeting and hand it out in advance. Don’t hold meetings just because your department always has biweekly meetings; only hold meetings because you need to and because you have a clear plan of what needs to be said and discussed.</li> <li>Make sure that only attendees are people who need to be present Don’t hinder the rest of your organization by dragging everybody into a meeting if only four or five people actually need to be there. If people other than the attendees need to be informed about what was discussed at the meeting then take notes and email it to them afterwards.</li> <li>Establish objectives for the meeting Establish clear objectives for what you want to get out of the meeting – the agenda covers what's going to be discussed during the meeting but your objectives cover what the discussion is going to accomplish. Discussion is great, but it’s not productive if it does not have a goal. Here’s an example of a good goal for a production meeting for a multi-author blog: we’re meeting today to determine the schedule for all blog posts over the next six months. It clearly states what the discussion should work towards and makes the expectations for the meeting clear.</li> <li>Have the attendees prepare in advance (if necessary) If your meeting requires its attendees to present information and plans then you should require them to prepare materials in advance like handouts, PowerPoint presentations, and outlines. Do you really want to sit through another meeting where you watch your attendees scrawl unintelligible impromptu graphs on the whiteboard instead of giving you the information in a neatly summarized handout beforehand? No? Then tell your attendees to prepare in advance.</li> <li>Keep it short Everybody has something to say – unfortunately there isn’t enough time in the day to listen to all of it. The law of diminishing returns applies to meetings too – the longer a meeting runs past a certain threshold, the less productive each additional minute becomes. There are a number of things you can try to <a href="http://blog.smartdraw.com/archive/2008/07/08/three-techniques-for-keeping-meetings-brief.aspx">keep your meeting brief</a> (time boxing, limited speaking time, etc…) but the most important thing is to do something to keep it short. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as the attendees and organizers of the meeting make a conscious effort to keep things brief.</li> <li>Record key points and decisions It’s crucial that key points, ideas, information, and action items are recorded during a meeting – attendees and other people influenced by what’s discussed during the meeting need to be able to go back and review what was discussed and more importantly, what was decided during the meeting. Most people record meetings using hand-written outlines, which they often compile into typed notes; others sometimes record the audio of the meeting and use that to produce a written outline after the meeting has concluded. Again, it doesn’t matter what system you use as long as someone records what was discussed and decided during the meeting and distributes those notes to all of the other attendees and interested parties.</li> <li> Create action items and assign them The most important part about making a meeting productive is to make the attendees accountable for implementing the decisions rendered during the meeting. The best way to do this is to create "action items," actionable tasks that are assigned to some or all of the attendees. Obviously action items must be recorded and distributed along with any notes from the meeting; it's important that you or one of the other attendees record to whom each action item has been assigned and when each action item is due. This kind of public assignment helps hold the attendees accountable for implementing the decisions rendered during a meeting.</li> <li>Report progress and follow-up Lastly, you want actively investigate the progress of the meeting's action items and to inform the other attendees of the progress of the action items that all of you agreed upon. Post-meeting communication is simply another tool to help keep your meeting attendees accountable for implementing the decisions made during the meeting and it also helps eliminate future, unnecessary "progress meetings."</li></ul>There are probably millions of other ways to help make meetings more productive, but I think these tips will produce the best return on your investment. If you have any other thoughts on the subject feel free to leave comments below. -Aaron <a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1d2d78f6165a419326c8277700ca92b0"><img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1d2d78f6165a419326c8277700ca92b0"/></a> <img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=1d2d78f6165a419326c8277700ca92b0" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/DumbLittleMan?a=SLiXXq"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/DumbLittleMan?i=SLiXXq" border="0"></img></a><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?a=ojnr7j"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?i=ojnr7j" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?a=ILN6ej"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?i=ILN6ej" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?a=xqrL1j"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?i=xqrL1j" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?a=ojTzIj"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?i=ojTzIj" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?a=P0kYGJ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/DumbLittleMan?i=P0kYGJ" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DumbLittleMan/~4/330920381" height="1" width="1"/></content><author><name>Jay White</name><email>noreply@blogger.com</email></author></entry><entry><updated>2008-07-09T07:03:01.738-05:00</updated><title type="text">12 Ways To Become an Utter Failure at Work</h3><content type="html"><div id="write"><h7 class="write">Written on 7/09/2008 by Tim Brownson, of <a href="http://www.adaringadventure.com/blog/wordpress">A Daring Adventure</a>.</h7></div> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/heygabe/2331695436/"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_dH0q9hvpVHg/SHOLS9MjMhI/AAAAAAAAB6s/CpgNpxOLPs8/s400/fail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5220669550833644050" border="0" /></a>As a life coach I speak to lots of people about self-development. It’s one of the cool things about my job; I actually get paid to help people make their lives more fulfilling. However, every now and then somebody will say something along the lines of, “Yeah I know what you mean, but that sounds like really hard work.” They’re absolutely right! Self-development is indeed a life long process but so is brushing your teeth, eating healthy food and breathing. Guess what else is tough - being miserable, unhappy and unsuccessful. Do you think people with those traits got where they are by accident and taking things easy? Of course they didn't, they worked damn hard at it. They didn't become over night failures, they committed themselves to a lifetime of zero-growth and bitterness, especially in the workplace. I wouldn’t normally do this for obvious reasons, but just in case you’d like to join their ranks, I’m going to offer you 12 tips that will guarantee a lifetime of misery at work. <ul><li>Demoralize Always make sure that the first thing you say when entering in the morning and the leaving the office in the evening brings everybody down. Examples could be “I see the economy has taken another turn for the worse”, “The CEO is planning another round of head cuts according to Sue in HR” and “I knew I shouldn’t have come to work with this bug the kids gave me, 3 people have died from it already in our neighborhood.”</li> <li>Holidays If you need a big day off, don’t risk booking it in advance. If you ask for July 4th off, management may say no. Phone in sick at the last minute (from the beach). Don’t worry; somebody will cover for you even if it means they have to leave their family to come into the office. It’s not a charity you know, and anyway it’s not your fault they only get to see their sick Grandpa once every 4 years.</li> <li>Horde If you have any ideas that will help all your colleagues perform more efficiently or be more successful, pretend you’re a squirrel and keep them to yourself. They’re your ideas; you earned, plagiarized or stole them. We’re not living in Russia or China or some other Commie country you know, nobody gives you hands out of cash. Let your motto be” “To have and to hold”.</li> <li>Undermine If one of your colleagues has a great idea in a meeting, never forget to ridicule it. Point out every way it can and will fail. Tell everybody how a similar suggestion failed in your last company and everybody lost their jobs, homes and ended up in jail. If it’s a really good idea, don’t be discouraged, just treat it as a challenge and undermine even harder. If all else fails, tell them about how when you worked at Enron they had that very same idea. The gold standard is not just to get the idea thrown out, but the have the person that suggested it ridiculed and hopefully fired.</li> <li>Gossip Tell Ian and Bob that Jay thinks they’re both jerks. Then tell Amanda that Lucy fancies her boyfriend and has been making eyes at him. Then tell Jay that Ian slept with the boss’s wife at the Christmas party but told her his name was Jay. Send a letter to Bob swearing undying love and sign it Ian and so on and so forth. This stuff doesn’t have to be technically true, as long as you have a hunch, that makes it all perfectly legal and above board.</li> <li>Brown Nose Always leave the office 30 seconds after you manager and get there 30 seconds before he arrives. Everybody in the office will cotton on to what you’re doing, but the manager will be in blissful ignorance and think you’re committed to the company cause. Roll your eyes at the boss whilst shaking your head every time somebody leaves early or arrives late.</li> <li>Undermine Spend hours on Facebook, MySpace and dating sites looking for dirt on colleagues. When you find something, accidentally send an e-mail with the link to the entire company. If that’s too risky borrow somebody else’s computer or just print pictures off at home and surreptitiously stick them all over the office when it’s empty. Blame Colin from dispatch. </li> <li>Porn When surfing for porn, always make sure you’re logged in under somebody else’s username and password and preferably on their computer too.</li> <li>Drinks If you have a communal fresh coffee machine and you notice it’s getting low, make sure you top yours up quickly otherwise you may be the one to have to fill it up. If you have a fresh cup, simply pour that away and then finish off the good stuff. The same goes for the water bottle. It’s not your job to change it if it runs dry. Just make sure you fill 4 or 5 cups to take back to your desk when it gets very low.</li> <li>Cell Phones Never ever turn you phone off at a meeting even when requested to do so. If it rings, simply hold up your hand condescendingly indicating everybody needs to be quiet and nod sagely as your mum tells you that Aunt Enid has lost her reading glasses down the toilet again. If anybody else’s phone should ring, roll your eyes; sigh heavily and then say in a low but perfectly audible whisper “disgraceful”.</li> <li>Deny Admission is a sign of weakness. If you screw up blame somebody else, anybody else, everybody else. Good people to blame are anybody that no longer works in your office, the timid office mouse that never fights his or her corner or anybody that has been within 100 feet of your desk within the last 6 months.</li></ul>So now you can see that being unsuccessful can be really hard work. These tips will help you get there, but they need to be fine-tuned and worked on for years and years. Of course you could do that or you could work on being the best person you can be. 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