I had a client who was scheduled for 30 hours of department meetings a week. His first question was "When are we supposed to do our work?" Organize your meetings with these tips and everyone will get more out of every meeting.
Accountability Matrix If you walk away from any meeting without deciding and documenting the who, what and when of all action items the odds of them getting done in a timely way are greatly reduced.
Use an Accountability Matrix for every meeting. If there is someone who takes follow-up notes, ask them to add the Matrix to the distribution. If not, use it yourself, to track your action items and/or the action items for which you are a 'Check-In'. A client who uses the Matrix in meetings has already spread it to five departments in his company.
Now everyone on the team knows who is responsible for what and when it is due. That is the first step in accountability. Don't worry about getting others to do their job -- unless you're the team leader of course!
Here's an example: (see the Accountability Matrix form) WHO Eve DUE DATE 10-15 ACTION:Submit tweaked proposal (e-mail) Info: phone/e-mail(describe with detail) CHECK-IN Steve DATE: as needed
ACCOUNTABILITY MATRIX
MEETING: DATE: TEAM MEMBERS:
WHO DUE DATE ACTION:
Info:
CHECK-IN DATE:
Satellite Meetings In my workshops, people tell me horror stories about how much time they spend in meetings that have nothing to do with them or their job. Typically, a manager or team leader calls everyone in for one meeting at the same time and three out of four people sit there while a discussion limited to another team member and their function rolls on.
On average, a three-hour meeting (one manager and four team leaders) can be reduced to 1 hour of team meeting and four 30-minute meetings. Everyone benefits from 'creating' more hours of working time for projects.
Wasn't that the point of all those meetings in the first place?
Copyright, Eve Abbott All Rights Reserved. "How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain TM" is an entertaining, interactive guide offering easy tips to make your personal organizing solutions match your individual work style.
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