How to make your year end meeting a hit

Author: Kevan Hall

In this edition, see how to make your year end meeting a hit, by following our 6 practical agenda tips.

Face to face time is too important to waste on information.

For many of us the year end meeting is one of the few opportunities to get face to face with our colleagues.

If you are involved in one of these meetings here are 3 things to avoid and 3 things to aim for to make your meeting a success.

Three things to avoid - your face to face time is too precious for

1. Finding out what everyone else has spent the year doing. Avoid the temptation to give every individual or department time to present, they will feel the need to fill their time allocation and most people will not be interested. Instead why not have a quick “trade show” where every department or individual can have a small display or poster and other attendees can browse and stop and ask about the things they are interested in.

2. Best Practice reviews – I often call these “great solutions to problems I don’t have”, people present what they are proud of but not what the audience needs. Learning will only be used if it is relevant to the audience. Why not ask the audience what they want to learn about in advance and offer some short flexible sessions where they can ask subject matter experts what they want to know. Make these sessions optional so people without a need don’t need to sit through irrelevant discussions.

3. Anything that involves sitting passively and watching a presentation. Face time should be for participation, not consumption. If you must present make it short, participative and interactive.

Focus your "face time" on things that you can't do remotely

There are some things that are almost impossible to do remotely, so why not focus your scarce face to face time on these;

1. Creating new ideas together – brainstorm how to meet next year’s plan, finalize plans, and discuss ideas in small groups. Groups are much more committed to solutions they develop themselves.

2. Networking – the most valuable time in most meetings is during the breaks and lunchtime – design these to make networking easy, avoid formal sit down lunches, keep mixing up seating arrangements, allow time for extended breaks. Make networking impossible to avoid

3. Celebration – it’s hard to celebrate remotely so use the time to recognize success and make people feel good.

At this time of year we often get calls from clients saying “We have a global meeting booked in 2 weeks and we are looking for some content”. If you don’t have compelling content requiring a meeting why not cancel it and use the money to have a party instead. The improved relationships and point of connection will probably be of more value to you than the information you get across in a traditional meeting.

If you are not responsible for planning the meeting yourself, why not forward a copy of this note to your boss or a colleague who can make it happen.

Our Speed Survey tells us that 20% of all management and professional staff time is spent on meetings we do not need be in. For more ideas on how to make your meetings less frequent and more participative, get your copy of Speed Lead

Visit the Speed Lead site at www.speedleading.com

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Last updated: 03/01/07 01:22pm