How can you ensure that your meeting stays on track?
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Meetings are essential for any consulting project, but they can also be a source of frustration, confusion, and wasted time. How can you ensure that your meeting stays on track and achieves its objectives? Here are some tips to help you plan, run, and follow up on effective meetings.
Before you schedule a meeting, ask yourself what you want to accomplish and why. Is it to share information, brainstorm ideas, make decisions, or get feedback? Be specific and realistic about your goals and how they relate to the project scope and timeline. Write down the purpose of the meeting and communicate it to the attendees in advance.
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Ivan McAdam O'Connell 🌏
Freedom Lifestyle Designer : From bank COO to helping people unlock their true potential
Always start with the end in mind. I like to ask, "What do I want my client to feel at the end of the presentation?" Then work back from this. Knowing your goal, you can plan and structure your narrative, structure, content, and sequence to achieve your goals. This all starts with a clear purpose and goal. Understand your audience and understand their differing perspectives, and make distinct plans for each, and include content that supports your goal. Plan and rehearse this well, and make sure everyone knows their goal, and materials, and all supporting materials and resources to achieve your goal are in place.
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Ari Harrison, MBA
Consultant / 2nd Year Ph.D. Candidate
Imagine you're steering a ship. Without a predetermined destination, you might find yourself drifting aimlessly, wasting precious time and resources. Similarly, without a well-defined purpose, a meeting can quickly devolve into a myriad of unrelated topics, making it difficult to achieve any meaningful results. The beauty of having a clear purpose is that it serves as a roadmap, guiding the conversation and keeping everyone aligned. It allows attendees to prepare in advance and contribute effectively to the discussion. Moreover, it provides a benchmark against which the success of the meeting can be measured.
An agenda is a roadmap for your meeting that outlines the topics, tasks, and time allocation. It helps you stay focused, avoid distractions, and manage expectations. To create an agenda, start with the most important and urgent items, and estimate how much time each one will take. Include a clear objective, action items, and responsibilities for each topic. Send the agenda to the attendees at least a day before the meeting and ask for their input and confirmation.
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Eric Hart
Director of Client Success & Support - ChathamDirect - Global Corporates
How many times have you walked into a meeting and it starts right up with no clear understanding of the plan or intent for the meeting? This is a guaranteed way to open the door for your meeting to get derailed. While I have always felt that meetings should provide opportunity for people to give open input and organic discussion, we all have far too many meetings on our schedule as it is. Respecting everyone's time is critical. Don't schedule meetings unless they are necessary, and don't start a meeting without an agenda. Oh, and if it takes you 5 minutes to cover what's on your agenda, that is where you need to focus most of your time re-thinking your approach to meetings.
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Banks D.
Helping Enterprises win in product delivery. Learner, Lead Mentor, Project Board Member & Blogger
the most singular objective of any meeting is the expected outcomes or agenda after the meeting. without one, any meeting is an objective waste of time or a social gathering. participants must have this objective embedded into them and be aware of how they will impact this expected objective
Depending on the type and format of your meeting, you may need to prepare some materials to support your discussion and decision making. These could include slides, documents, charts, data, or tools. Make sure that your materials are relevant, concise, and clear, and that they align with your agenda and purpose. Test your technology and equipment before the meeting and have a backup plan in case of any issues.
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Banks D.
Helping Enterprises win in product delivery. Learner, Lead Mentor, Project Board Member & Blogger
In this day of hybrid meetings and a lot of online activity, its easy to assume that all materials must be digital and easily assessible. For my meetings i love to try out how my participants understand the materials i share with them and other information they will need to ensure everything is going to run smoothly and they understand the 'ask' for the successful operation of the activities planned. Based on the agenda, the materials provided always helps the participant work from an aligned understanding of expected conversations, clarify assumptions and create an atmosphere of individual creativity and curiosity. Once tested and confirmed, we are usually good to go 99% of the time
As the meeting leader, your role is to facilitate the discussion and ensure that everyone participates, contributes, and respects the rules. Start the meeting by reviewing the agenda and the purpose, and setting some ground rules for communication and collaboration. During the meeting, guide the conversation, ask questions, summarize key points, and resolve conflicts. Keep an eye on the time and the progress, and adjust the agenda if needed. End the meeting by recapping the outcomes, action items, and next steps.
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Ivan McAdam O'Connell 🌏
Freedom Lifestyle Designer : From bank COO to helping people unlock their true potential
As facilitator you steer the meeting and the message. Have clear goals, and a clear structure to support this. Make sure your support team know the roles they play, and practice your interactions and teamwork for full effect. Time is always a constraint, and watch this. But also know when to give time and space for impact to land, to support your goals. A great facilitator is well prepared, and understands not just the goal, but also the audience, their backgrounds and perspectives, and how this all relates and meets together with the materials and in the meeting.
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Banks D.
Helping Enterprises win in product delivery. Learner, Lead Mentor, Project Board Member & Blogger
Facilitation is vital in any meeting so we prevent discussions going down a 'rabbit hole' Facilitation ensures that all discussion focus on arriving at the objectives of the meeting where possible. It also helps drive alignment between the participants and create a sense of direction towards making vital decisions as needed. Beyond story telling and creating a viable roadmap of conversational values, facilitating meetings is a vital leadership attribute that is needed every time, no matter the lenght, size or expected impact of the meeting. it ensures whatever decisions is or are made is an expected valuable outcome
The meeting is not over until you follow up on the results and make sure that everyone is on the same page and accountable. Within 24 hours of the meeting, send a summary of the meeting to the attendees and other stakeholders, highlighting the main points, decisions, action items, and deadlines. Ask for feedback and clarification if needed, and monitor the implementation of the tasks. Schedule a follow-up meeting if necessary to review the results and address any issues.
By following these tips, you can ensure that your meeting stays on track and delivers value to your project and your client. Effective meetings can boost your productivity, creativity, and collaboration, and help you achieve your consulting goals.
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Himma Nazar, ACCA
Assistant Manager- Accounting & Tax Advisory | Ex-Big 4
Following up is crucial. Most of us focus on nailing the meeting but we hardly follow up on the results. It is important to monitor the progress of meeting and its impact on the workflow. That way we can identify what is working and what is not.
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Banks D.
Helping Enterprises win in product delivery. Learner, Lead Mentor, Project Board Member & Blogger
As an experienced product person, every meeting outcome, decisions, issues and more is always shared with all participants within 24hours. it is usually a tool of appreciation, direction, future progress, allocating tasks and deciding the direction of product delivery progress where necessary. Its also a tool to help get future collaborative response from participants where they are needed in the future - everyone likes a pat in the back - and that is ultimately the purpose of following up. It also helps to drive progress and ensure the collaborative spirit is on fire/course
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Arpit Apoorva
Startup & Business Consulting | Ex-Deloitte | Harvard Business | Insights on Strategy, Leadership and Emerging Technology
To maintain focus and ensure meetings stay on track, set a clear agenda outlining objectives and time allocations for each topic. Assign a facilitator to guide discussions and prevent tangents. Encourage active participation while managing time effectively. Address deviations by politely steering discussions back to the agenda, prioritizing key points, and deferring non-urgent topics to later discussions or follow-ups. Regularly review progress and reiterate goals to keep everyone aligned, promoting efficiency and achieving meeting objectives.
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Hengky Widjaja
Consultant | Senior Business Analyst | Aha Moment Creator | Digital Transformation | Integration | Coach | I work stuff out | Rent my brain | I give out plenty of insults
Meetings are about coming together to do something. Start with thinking about why you need to gather those people and the objectives. IMO, the most critical elements are: - Planning, which could involve a catch up with the participants beforehand - Knowing the participants and the dynamics between each other - Every participant contributing and hopefully getting something out of the meeting To me, it's about a conversation with multiple people and so the key is to control the flow and the topic to hopefully get outcomes.