Posts Tagged ‘meeting’

Six Great Ways to Ruin a Brainstorm

The brainstorm is the most popular group creativity exercise. It is quick, easy and it works. But many organizations have become frustrated with brainstorms and have stopped using them. They say brainstorms are old-fashioned and no longer effective. But the real reason for the frustrations is that the brainstorms are not facilitated properly. A well-run brainstorm is fun and energetic. It will generate plenty of good ideas. But a poor… » Continue

May 1 2008 | By Paul | Tagged: brainstorm, business, idea, meeting, thinking | 7 comments»

Where are the aids for increasing GENUINE personal productivity?

Too much of today’s personal productivity is stuck in repeating the past

A genuine increase in productivity means getting the same, or greater, output with less effort and a smaller use of resources. Yet most personal productivity software still relies on various ways to categorize old-fashioned to-do lists.

That focuses on getting more done by improved organization; it’s working harder for longer (mostly by virtue of avoiding distractions and procrastination)… » Continue

March 13 2008 | By Adrian | Tagged: lists, meeting, priorities, Productivity, software, todo | 13 comments»

3 Ways To Get Meetings Back On Track

Shannon Kalvar takes the approach of assuming many meetings not only have the habit of drifting fast off point, but are happy doing so. Hence why she’s called this article Three effective ways to anger people in meetings.

Instead of allowing this to go on, Shannon suggests three approaches to quickly putting the meeting back on track.

Cut people off after the third iteration

My personal inclination is to cut people off… » Continue

October 12 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: meeting | 2 comments»

Try Stand Up Meetings

Probably the biggest issue with workplace meetings is their length. Almost always, meetings take longer than is necessary. This is particularly true for those daily keep-us-up-to-date meetings.

You could try killing meetings all together, or try what John Trosko suggests and hold the meetings that aren’t long and strategic with everyone standing up.

Instead of sitting at a traditional conference table, we took the chairs out of the room and… » Continue

October 2 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: meeting | 12 comments»

Meetings Should End With Next Actions

After a few years studying the way creative teams work and developing excellent productivity and organizational solutions, Behance have a few tips regarding meetings.

Meetings that end without action steps are a waste of our time. When our Action Pads contain no action steps after a meeting, we realize that the meeting should have been a voice-mail or email. The lesson: Only call a meeting when you suspect that actions… » Continue

September 20 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: meeting | 5 comments»

6 Reasons Why it Makes Sense to Arrive Early

Why bother showing up early when you can blame any number of things for “making” you late? There’s traffic, a convenient ally when you need her. A distant cousin to traffic would be a freeway accident, which of course creates traffic. Then there’s the blatantly obvious excuse of sleeping through the alarm which causes you to get on the freeway late and immerse yourself in- you… » Continue

September 6 2007 | By Mike | Tagged: early, late, meeting | 25 comments»

Are you late?

Why are you late?

Time management begins with one of the absolute basics - arrive on time. In his book Copy This!, the founder of Kinko’s (now FedEx Kinko’s) Paul Orfalea recounts that he would make hiring decisions based on key basic modes of operating. One of those is being punctual. I’m sure that Mr. Orfalea isn’t the only one making career decisions based on being on time and… » Continue

June 15 2007 | By Susan | Tagged: late, meeting, on-time, Productivity, time-management | 22 comments»

Be The Guy Who Wears A Name Tag Everywhere

…or girl.

Scott Ginsberg’s story is that one day after an event at college, he decided to keep his name tag on. What he noticed was he was instantly more approachable the rest of the day.

Since then Scott has kept the name tag on [for an odd 2400 days], writing a few books on meeting people and running seminars on the subject.

What’s interesting is the affect this small gesture has… » Continue

May 8 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: Communication, meeting, meetings, networking, talk | 13 comments»

Productivity & Organizing Myth #10 – We need to be at all those meetings!

Myth: We need to be at all those meetings and events that have made their way onto our calendars.
Reality: We can succeed at work and be happy with a modest number of meetings and activities. Do you say any of these things?

I haven’t been home at 6 o’clock in the evening for weeks.
We are constantly trying to balance work with kids’ activities with family commitments.
I have to schedule a

» Continue

March 29 2007 | By Susan | Tagged: Management, meeting, priority, Productivity | 3 comments»

5 Tips to ‘Handle’ Unwanted Workplace Visitors

Ian McKenzie has a few tips to keep those office visits as short as you like, so you can get back to work. There’s nothing worse than someone over-staying there welcome, at work or otherwise.

Be the visitor. If you have to speak with someone, go to their office. That way, you can control the length of the visit. When your done, excuse yourself and leave.
Turn away from the door. If

» Continue

March 29 2007 | By Craig | Tagged: meeting, meetings, office, office-politics | 3 comments»

7 Ways to Avoid Pointless Meetings

Ben Yoskovitz, from the Instigator Blog, has a great list of ways to avoid pointless meetings. If you find yourself not wanting to avoid pointless meetings, you should read this book. If you do want to avoid them, read Ben’s post instead:

Make sure the meeting has a clear purpose.
Avoid suspense.
Document what’s going on.
Avoid distractions.
Have an agenda.
Avoid regular meetings if there’s no agenda
Schedule something critical right

» Continue

March 23 2007 | By Nick | Tagged: business, Management, meeting | 4 comments»

Make Your Meetings More Effective

Tyner Blain suggests number of ways to improve the effectiveness of the meeting - it’s a key to gain more time to do the actual work. Tips contains pointers to do prior, during and after meetings:

Before the meeting:

Define Goals for the Meeting
Prepare an Agenda in Advance
Administrivia

During the meeting:

Keep Topics Relevant to the Attendees
Demonstrate Respect for People’s Time
Administrivia
Deliverables

After the meeting:

Wrap-up

Conclusion and action items are important for a meeting. A quick rule… » Continue

October 18 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: Management, meeting | 4 comments»

How brainstorming works best

True, brainstorming session seems not effective at all. Group think and silence-of-death etc are lethal for the discussion. There are ways to improve the effectiveness of brainstorming from a group. A web site called Post-gazette suggests having individual to brainstorm alone may decrease group think and improve discussions:

…David Perkins, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, warns that sometimes group sessions can result in one person’s bad idea… » Continue

June 15 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: brainstorm, meeting | 1 comment»

10 things you can do to organize and lead effective meetings

TechRepublic has a good list of 10 things to organize and lead effective meetings. Quick and easy way to change deadly waste time meeting into a productive and effective meeting:

Know why you called the meeting
Know what action you expect from the meeting
Never send a meeting to do a conversation’s work
Designate someone you trust to take the minutes
Establish the rules of order
Start on time, end early
Maintain focus
Assign action items at the

» Continue

May 18 2006 | By Leon | Tagged: meeting, Productivity | no comments»

Meetings Best Practices

Bill at bBlog points us to an article at Open Loops about best practices for being a meeting participant. I like the spin, because there are lots of posts out there about how to run meetings, but of course, for every one person running a meeting, there are plenty more sitting there twiddling their thumbs wondering what to do.

Bert Webb covers what one might consider as a participant before… » Continue

May 13 2006 | By Chris | Tagged: gtd, guideline, meeting, work-life | no comments»

« Previous Entries