Of all the woes that curse our race there is management meeting in the case.
If you want to save time, you need to ask yourself:
- Do I need to be present in the meeting?
- Do I need to be present for all the meetings?
- Is it possible to delegate to some one else?
- As a chairperson, before I begin a meeting do I have an idea how long will it take?
- Do I know how much time I plan to allocate on each item on the agenda?
I am assuming you have an agenda for the meeting.
Here is an eye opener
The time spent on any item on the agenda will be inversely proportional to its value. In other words, there is a huge tendency to spend a disproportionate time on the trivial issues.
How do you ensure you don’t devote more time on trivial issues?
By prioritizing the items and then allocating appropriate time in relation to their importance. This is a very important consideration and often ignored by most managers.
It is not a test of intelligence that
The length of a meeting increases in proportion to the number of people invited. Therefore, as a chairperson of the meeting, it is your responsibility to keep everyone’s contribution on target without offending them.
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One way to run an effective daily meeting is to make it short and specific. Get every member to share “what’s up” in their area of responsibility, where are they “stuck” and what are their plans and tasks for that day. That way every member knows what is going on in the organization and can contribute their ideas to help their team members. As not to waste time, each member is allocated 5 to 10 minutes to say what is on their mind.