How to Have Great Meetings
Can you imagine a workplace without meetings? Most people can’t. There are over 11 million meetings a day in the U.S. alone.
Since we started our company over three years ago, we’ve come pretty close to our goal of no meetings. Sure, we talk. We get things done. And every once in a while we even have a “meeting.” We like them to zip along, though. Start fast, end faster, get to work. This week I stumbled across three very interesting articles about how to have effective meetings, each of which start with an admonition about avoiding meetings.
Five Weeeeird Tips for Great Meetings. Alexander, the Chief Happiness Officer, makes me smile every day. He offers some fun tips for effective meetings. One idea: Lose the table and meet standing up.
7 Ways to Avoid Pointless Meetings. Ben at Institgator Blog subtitled this one “Meeting don’t have to suck.”
The 7 Sins of Deadly Meetings. This Fast Company article says, “Meeting are too long. They should do twice as much in half the time.”
Although professionals in American business are said to waste over 30 hours in meetings monthly, there is a better way. Way back when I started working I used to attend group meetings that were quick…and on time. The big boss used to lock the conference room door at the exact time the meeting was to begin. And inevitably someone who was late would tug on the door. They only did that once.
Teambuilding Idea: Learn Japanese Writing
Here’s a fun idea for a teambuilding exercise: learn Japanese writing. iKana is a cool new app that can help trainers learn some Kanji, and then have some teambuilding fun. What the heck, it’s got to be better than “two truths and a lie” as an icebreaker. And who can go wrong with flash cards?
[via Mat Lu at TUAW]
Many Hands Make Light Work
HR’s job is to get it right. Every time. And if we don’t, people notice. They can be vocal, and they can be biting. But what if we could turn that energy into a collective barnbuilding? If there are mistakes, to get employees to be part of the solution? To leverage the Amish way of “many hands make light work”?
I was reading Thoughts on To-Do Lists by Diego Rodriguez and was struck with what he said about harnessing the energy of the public:
Just think what could happen if more organizations put their to-do lists out in public. I think we’d all feel a lot better about doing business with each other. Say — just for the sake of discussion — that you run the FAA’s website and you’ve found some embarrassing typos on your site. But you can’t fix them right away because your web admin is out hiking in Bora Bora (by the way, they’ve now been fixed). What if you could add the “Fix Typos on Travelers page” on your public FAA To Do List blog, right after the entry “Make our site almost as good as that best website ever from Tenacious D”? Knowing that someone intends to do something, that they are aware of their shortcomings and are trying to improve things, can go a long way toward making you believe.
Even better would be to open up that to-do list to anyone. So when I find the typos on the FAA website, rather than writing a snarky post on my blog, I help ‘em out by entering an item on their to-do list wiki. Now I’m part of the solution, and probably part of the brand. It’s about leveraging the power of the many to create the best pile of real evidence possible about what works and what doesn’t. At some point along the line this starts to feel a lot like open source.
A to-do list wiki. I’m putting that on my to-do list right now.
Technorati Tags: to-do, metacool, wiki, cooperation, HR
A Definition of Teamwork
Sheryl and I had a long drive this weekend to my uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary party. And since we had so much time in the car we did a bunch of crossword puzzles. The theme for the Nov. 16, 2006 puzzle in The Philadelphia Inquirer really struck me as what a lot of managers really mean when they say “teamwork”:
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
- Michael Winner
It’s HR’s job to define “teamwork” and give managers the tools to really create team success. I was always a fan of The Team Handbook and the good work that Peter Scholtes did. Learning to work as a team requires eternal vigilance. The Team Handbook exercises are a good start.
Cisco’s TelePresence is Amazing
Cisco’s TelePresence HD video conferencing system is amazing. “Just because meetings are boring doesn’t mean they have to be low-res as well” is how they describe it on Engaget. Robert Scoble has video of how it works. Truly amazing. The HD screens make it look like people are really sitting there in a meeting. Intro price for special tables, screens, and hardware, is to be about $300K according to Engaget.
And think about how much money can be saved by keeping your employees closer to home and not wasting time in airports thinking about which six ounces of liquids they can take in a clear bag in the carry-on luggage.
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