How do we avoid useless and long meetings?
This is a response to the “How Can I Help You?” Email and Miriam, gave us this situation where she had a meeting with a stakeholder for 45 minutes but nothing was achieved. She just walked out and thought, “What was the point in that?” To avoid this, how do we set purposeful meetings?
And so this is a common thing that came up comes up for people. And just think to yourself how many times have you been into a meeting where one or a whole group of people and then you’ve walked out thinking, “What was the point in that?”, or “What did we actually achieve in that?” This is one of the biggest productivity killers which is a matter of non-purposeful meetings.
So I’m going to give you the Five P’s to resolve this, which is with every meeting that you have, you need to get crystal clear.
• What is the purpose of that meeting?
• What is the product or the outcome that needs to be achieved?
• People – Who needs to be there?
• Process – What is the right process? Is it a meeting? is it an email? Is it a phone call? Is it a workshop? What is the right process? What’s the duration?
• What preparation needs to be done by them, or by you, before the meeting?
If you do a Five P’s scan of your calendar this week looking forward and if there are meetings or workshops that don’t pass the five Ps, check them. If you’re not clear on the purpose, you’re not clear on the product, or you’re not clear that the right people or you need to be there. Then just decline the meetings. If you have regular meetings with stakeholders that are generally in this category, bring the Five P’s to it and say, “Hey, I just thought that we might be able to get a bit more efficient and more effective with this meeting that we have. By just getting crystal clear on why is it important that we meet what is the purpose in the first place. Let’s all get clear of that.”
People literally feel like it’s a gift when you’re purposeful in your dialogue because they see 45 minutes and assume it was going to be an hour. So, take that model and you can bring the clarity of purpose and outcome and have you got the right people, what is the right process, just ask them those questions to make sure that all your meetings are really achieving an outcome.
The latest research that we’ve just seen globally, is that people are busier than ever before, but less productive than ever before, and this tool is one of them, which is a matter of getting more purposeful, with what you want to do, and then actually limiting the strategy in the time-wasting activities. The 5 P’s Model really helps you do that.
Be sure to check out my previous post:
I’m all about helping you achieve your success so if you wanted to learn more about how I can help, I’m just one text or email away.
You can reach me at:
+61 409538690
robin@inspiremeconsulting.com.au
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