Effective meetings: Notes, reflections, and follow-on comments to Fall 2006 session
We enjoyed the session, and found many themes resonating with the goals and orientation that we are addressing with the Practicing Management effort. There's much you can to do improve the meetings you run - and attend! - if you draw on the practice of preparing-acting-reflecting on every meeting. To follow up on some specific things, we thought we'd add a few thoughts and resources here. We've listed highlights from your "Notes to Self" and uploaded our notes from the discussion on what to do before and after meetings. Also check out the powerpoints that we showed--including some more detail on some of the key ideas. And don't forget the opportunity to Create Your Own Checklist of actions before and after a meeting.
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3M meetings network a commercial site with resources, readings, etc
For the following readings, go to this MIT Libraries site and search using the citation information below.
How to Make Every Meeting Matter May 1, 2003, by Tom Krattenmaker, Harvard Management Communication Letter
In today's workplace, time is in short supply. Unfortunately, meetings aren't. Here are some strategies for making good meetings better and for killing the time sinks.
How to run a meeting. By: Jay, Antony. Harvard Business Review, Mar/Apr76, Vol. 54 Issue 2, p43-57
Why is it that any single meeting may be a waste of time, an irritant, or a barrier to the achievement of an organization's objectives? The answer lies in the fact, as the author says, that "all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off course, and errors of psychology and technique on the chairman's part can defeat its purposes." This article offers guidelines on how to right things that go wrong in meetings. The discussion covers the functions of a meeting, the distinctions in size and type of meetings, ways to define the objectives, making preparations, the chairman's role, and ways to conduct a meeting that will achieve its objectives.
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