Forum Replies Created
- AuthorPosts
- 9 September 2023 at 3:36 pm #4243kieranfoleyParticipant
Interesting points, Ron
I was wondering if people have any thoughts on the subject of setting an Agenda?
My impression is that successful meetings seem to follow an agenda which is ‘chunked’ in a specific way. There are not more than 3-4 broad areas to be covered, and each area never has more than 3-4 subsections, if any. Personally I find few things more demoralizing than a 30 point agenda, going down into 1.2.3.5. numbering – knowing that many of the items will not be covered. It seems to me to be a recipe for failure.
Ki
22 February 2022 at 8:17 pm #5015kieranfoleyParticipantIntroductions IMO tend to be in the middle of the organisations culture and the meeting cultures of the people attending. When attending a country with a different meeting culture, don’t expect them to adapt to yours. When they are in your country, maintain your own meeting culture but show sensitivity to things that might be deal breakers.
22 February 2022 at 8:04 pm #5014kieranfoleyParticipantI’ll jump in on this
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 was something you should give a heads-up about..
22 February 2022 at 7:59 pm #5013kieranfoleyParticipantInteresting to have an approach that seems to be an exercise in collaborative writing as a team. I am curious how Amazon avoid getting into “Revision Hell”. I saw this happen when editing a Divisional newsletter in a large Corporate. Each layer of organisation would countermand the changes from the level underneath them!
22 February 2022 at 6:04 pm #5011kieranfoleyParticipantThe key rule seems to be “expect the unexpected”.
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 above our room.
22 February 2022 at 5:38 pm #5010kieranfoleyParticipantFor me, this can come under what type of impression do you want to make with your attendees?
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.
2 March 2021 at 1:40 pm #1107kieranfoleyParticipantSmall point, just to get the conversation started.
If you are going to sign documents that are translated from a foreign language, always ensure that you work with two independent translators to scrutinize both sets of documents – the ones you are signing and the one’s the other party are signing to ensure they are the same in both content and spirit. It is one occasion where rapport needs to be broken, otherwise you may find that the meaning of what you are signing is quite different from what you thought.
2 March 2021 at 1:32 pm #1106kieranfoleyParticipantIf you need to leave before the end of a meeting and know this before the start – either let people know in advance or have be mentioned by the chair at the start of the meeting. If you are essential to some of the agenda items, advance warning can enable the order to be changed, so your contribution will make a difference.
It also helps to take a chair nearest the exit, so that your departure will be minimally physically disruptive to the other participants.
2 March 2021 at 1:28 pm #1105kieranfoleyParticipantThe best practice is to have the points of agreement written up on a flip-chart for all to see and added to as the meeting progresses. The summary at the end will just be a quick review (reading out) of the points. This is much better than the alternative, which is to have one person in the meeting keeping notes and then having a summary cobbled together from those notes. This is a recipe for “that’s not what we agreed!” opportunities for conflict. D it as you go will steer clear of those issues.
2 March 2021 at 1:23 pm #1104kieranfoleyParticipantIdeally do this within the meeting itself and have that be part of the Agenda for the meeting. Keep this really short and make sure that people who come to the meeting are informed that they will be expected to have their availability ready. Have this process occur before the distribution of the minutes for the meeting, which should be the last item for the meeting – this will enable the meeting to finish on a high note, with everyone clear on their next steps and the date and time of the next meeting.
2 March 2021 at 1:18 pm #1103kieranfoleyParticipantCourtesy reflects a person’s value to us. When we treat a person with courtesy – with kindness and empathy – it shows that they matter to us.
Courtesy has two components – our own state, and the impact that that state has on anther. In terms of our own state – we need to model behaviours such as listening, summarising accurately, and being intolerant of interruptions (whether from ourselves or them); in terms of the impact, we need to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the other person. It isn’t enough to just be polite in ourselves – we have to model what being courteous to the other person would look, sound and feel like for them
For example, in Dutch culture, plain speaking and directness is a very important value and being courteous might look like a) being polite and constructive and b) matching the other person’s level of directness and seeing it, not as confrontation, but as an expression of the honesty and respect they have for you.
2 March 2021 at 12:17 pm #1102kieranfoleyParticipantA key aspects of dealing with spin-off meetings and projects is not to assume they will remain smaller in scope than the meeting and project you are involved in. For example a project to speed up the performance of a website could lead to a team testing a complete re-write of the site in another computer language. A key issue is that of risk management. Is the scope of the new meeting / project really clearly determined? If the scope is clearly specified and most of all is in service to the main meeting / project, then all will probably be well. If it is not, the risk is of the side project ballooning and ultimately draining resources from the main project is very real. So be very clear on the scope of the side meeting / project right off the bat.
2 March 2021 at 11:28 am #1101kieranfoleyParticipantThe essence of this is timeliness.
By far the best approach is to have minutes produced in real-time and agreed and then issued BEFORE the meeting ends.
This creates a great deal of positive momentum and the experience for the participants that the meeting has already accomplished something.
With appropriate tech set-up beforehand, this is eminently do-able.
The next best is to publish minutes the same or next day and make it clear that any comments will be required within 24 hours before sending the amended minutes out.
The worst approach is to delay sending out minutes until the start of the next meeting. This is a recipe for ‘churn’ where the whole tone of the new meeting is derailed from the start -by arguing about the minutes and comments of the previous one.
2 March 2021 at 11:18 am #1100kieranfoleyParticipantA really useful way to think about meetings is what I call the Bridge / Flocks metaphor.
Between two get-togethers (represented by the supports of a suspension bridge), there is a ‘flock’ of actions that need to be shepherded to completion on the other side of the bridge.
The most important part of the meeting is what occurs between the two physical / virtual get-togethers, rather than the get-togethers themselves.
To complete this process must successfully, there needs to be not just productivity (doing the action) but coordination (“Ive done the action that you need to do your nest action”) and feedforward (“Im going to be late on action #6” is communicated as soon as that is known, NOT when your colleague thinks it is arriving on time)
2 March 2021 at 11:05 am #1099kieranfoleyParticipantOne of the quickest and simplest methods is to use the DeBono Thinking tool called PMI, which stands for Plus, Minus and Interesting.
It takes three minutes or less.
Plus
List what was positive and worked about the meeting
Minus
List what didn’t work about the meeting
Interesting
What were unexpected issues, ideas that came out of the meeting and what you could have done differently.
- AuthorPosts