Business Meetings

24th October 2013

How often do you have proper business meetings in your office? I don’t mean the informal chat in the kitchen while making the coffee, or the general chit chat about stuff going on, I mean proper organised, planned meetings which people are expected to turn up to, are expected to contribute to, and are expected to take clear actions away from.

In the early days when I am starting out with new clients, I will always find out if they are conducting useful meetings, and will generally ascertain that they are not. They will often tell me that they have one to one’s with various staff members, when they will discuss certain aspects of the business, and possibly even come up with brilliant new ideas. Unfortunately, however, these seldom result in significant steps forward, because the ideas are not written down, no-one commits to doing anything about it, and it simply ends up as time wasted.

Therefore isn’t it time you considered this aspect of your business and started to conduct regular productive meetings. If you have an organisational structure it should be simple to decide who is requires at which meeting, and also who will be reporting on what aspect. The meetings should be chaired confidently and strongly, so they do not wander off the point and take far longer than they should do. Each team member should report on their relevant area of responsibility (with relevant supporting documents circulated before the meeting) and then key points and issues should be discussed and minuted.

The outcome of each meeting should be a clear minuted document, with actions by whom and by when, so that steps forward are always taken between each meeting, and issues are dealt with. By doing it this way and making sure that people put meeting dates in their diary which they must turn up to, you will find that they become a productive positive aspect of your business, rather than a time consuming waste of effort.

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