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Showing posts with the label Meeting facilitation

To Be Good, Managers Must Have Good Meetings

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The other day, I was invited to attend a meeting with 11 top executives, the Big Wigs. The Big Wigs meet every Friday to discuss strategy. As a little wig, I was attending to fill the role of note taker. The topic of the day was about refreshing IT resources in the field. There was no meeting agenda. The meeting started 7 minutes late. One Big Wig had already laid out papers to work on during the meeting. Four of the Big Wigs sent their deputies to “cover” the meeting. The 2nd highest ranked Wig in the room began checking messages on his phone (or playing video games, I’m not sure which) after only 3 minutes. At the end of 60 minutes, I had not recorded a single meaningful discussion or action item. Not one. To hold this particular meeting cost the organization roughly $800 in salaries and benefits. We spent $800 to teach 11 Big Wigs that field reps are getting new laptops – even though all 11 knew that new laptops were on the way before the meeting started. I'm relaying