First: If you think the meeting truly needs the attendance of the senior person, ask Why? Find out the benefit for THEM  to attend and pitch it to them face to face in 10 seconds.

Secondly, dont frame it in terms of your own wants, frame it in terms of theirs. You could also just ask for a steer – you wondered whether this…[Read more]

I was once doing logistics for a mindfullness seminar, held at a fairly large hotel in Bristol, England. As you can imagine, it needed a lot of peace and quiet, which it got…until half-way through, when we found that there was a long standing 1940s English singalong in the bar that was directly…[Read more]

A lack of clarity about a simple aspect of a transaction like this may contribute to a bad first impression – and that could have very severe impacts for the individuals setting up the meeting, not to mention possible adverse business effects.

issue if differing sw is best resolved by ensuring links sent include a version that allows joining via browser even if you don’t have the sw installed – most meeting packages allow this although joining via just a browser link can sometimes  be slower and have features limited compared to joining through the same sw.

re the…[Read more]

These are great – thank you.

Couple of questions for you –

First – do you have any specifics about how to invite people who you think it is very important that they attend but may be extremely busy (perhaps a person further up the organisation) and have a default of NO! to meeting requests?

Secondly – could you give an example of what…[Read more]

Thank you for these.

I think there is a key point about joining instructions – it is not enough to go to the venue website and take what they say for granted about it being at the right level of detail – for example I have seen venue websites have maps of parking which just showed WHERE to park, but omitted that there were VERY FEW…[Read more]

Thanks for the above.

My experience with physical venues is that the 80/20 rule seems to apply. 20% of venues will give you 80% of your problems. I have seen venues that one might expect gold-standard service turn out to have next to no parking; have zero skills in helping set-up audio-visual equipment in terms of having the cables…[Read more]

Thanks for starting this off.

I was wondering if you had encountered situations in organisations where there is a culture of inviting just about everyone who might even be peripherally effected by the meeting to be there “just in case”. I have been in many meetings like this and wondering if there are any interventions to gently change…[Read more]

Thank you for this.

I was wondering if you have come across issues with the different types of software used for this and if you have any ideas on how to deal with people  (for example from other companies or organisations) who have to be at the meeting but are not on the internal booking system?

https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/jeff-bezos-knows-how-to-run-a-meeting-here-are-his-three-simple-rules.html

“No PowerPoints are used inside of Amazon,” Bezos proudly declares. “Somebody for the meeting has prepared a…

[Read more]

Keep attendee volumes to the minumum required (at or just above quorum) to produce the decision/outcomes you are chasing. Too many attendees will make this more difficult so:

Ruthlessly review each proposed attendee to see for instance:

do they play an active part in this project and/or the decisions you require TODAY?

do…[Read more]

If in house then its a case of:  if attendees don’t know the time, place , subject and duration of the meeting th…[Read more]

Also make sure your presentation materials,…[Read more]

1. Best of all by face to face request which allows immediate explanation/justification etc and makes invitee feel personably valued plus a probable immediate answer.
2. If not then by telephone – again giving some immediacy of outcome with some degree of a one to…

[Read more]

1. Is there a single corporate diary system that all staff (or all staff in the areas you are requesting attendance from) can access and which automatically send entries to each person’s diary once the invite is sent?
2. Are all (or some e.g.…

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did you call it but wont be attending i.e. you’ve asked others to hold it?

did you call it and you will be attending?

did someone else call it but asked you to arrange it?

did someone else ask you to arrange it and attend?

In each case a further affecting…[Read more]