Meetings Matter

I just conducted an interactive big group meeting with 45 people in the room. People from all departments and cross-sections of the organization. What a mess right? Not if you follow a time-sensitive strict agenda. Meetings are the platforms that move organizations to new levels of functioning. They are the means to arrive at ideas, strategies, and closing important business deals. It is a sad surprise then, that meetings are hardly ever structured the right way.

A huge part of my job is to make meetings matter. With careful agendas designed to bring out conversations that really need to happen, meetings can change your organization like never before. So think different with your people. Don't stick to the conventional high profile meetings of a select few in the company. Involve everybody in the most important decisions because everybody will be affected by them, and their decision to stay on in your company may be depend on it. Think BIG. Get everybody in the room. And if you are a leader, get good at facilitation. Actualize potential by delegating note-taking to someone, stick to an agenda that's important, allow all those important views and perspectives to get in, and nail those actions down.