Effective Meeting - How To Plan and Run (free Business e-Coach)

Functions of the Meeting

Rapid decision making
- bringing together key people to discuss and resolve issues
Disseminating information
- to pass information on to the staff and encourage staff involvement and ownership
Fostering internal changes
- to overcome resistance to change such as new corporate direction, policies, or procedures
Responding to external changes
- to exchange information and pass the knowledge on to decision makers from different departments
Exchange of ideas and experience
- to develop new approaches to solving of longstanding problems
Developing teamwork
- to help to develop mutual respect and understanding amongst the participants by involving them in a cooperative process

Types of Meeting

Informative / Advisory
- both to give and receive information
- to coordinate activities
- to record progress towards stated goals
Consultative
- to resolve objections
- to involve people in change or a new course of action
- to get to know people, as a means of fostering greater understanding between colleagues
Problem-Solving
- to consider all possibilities and create ideas
- to value the ideas and identify feasible options
- to chose course of action and initiate that action
Decision-Taking
- to generate commitment
- to take decisions
- to share responsibility
- to initiate action
Negotiating
- to create an agreement or contract
- to find the best solution / a mutually agreeable compromise

By: IDEO

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A typical staff meeting is the most blatant example of an uncreative process. At such a meeting, its leader unwittingly fails to ask for creative ideas, even at the most opportune points. A formal, professional atmosphere is combined with a meeting agenda to keep people "focused," or "on track." In such meetings, now freewheeling occurs. "Why meet in the first place if you don't take advantage of the group's unique creative potential? One person's question or comment can easily stimulate another's imagination - if you ask for imaginative thinking. Thus no business meeting should reach it's end without the leader asking for creative ideas."¹

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Pass out an agenda at least one day in advance; encourage people to add new items to the agenda prior to the meeting
Set time for the meeting; begin and end on time
Stick with the agenda and the targeted functions - to make decisions, to disseminate information, to foster internal changes, to respond to external changes, to exchange ideas and experiences, or to develop teamwork. Allow time for discussion, but stay on the topic.
Invite people to speak out their opinion. Silence does not necessarily means consent.
Record decisions and action assignments, preferably so that everybody could see them on a big screen. Summarize the action list at the end of the meeting. Check the action list for completion at the next meeting.

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