(9)Issue – Un-Preparedness in meetings equal ineffective meetings

Posted by on February 7, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized

There are a lot of gotchas when it comes to effective meetings that SharePoint can help you overcome.

Kate Grifdave, a 30-year veteran of high-level meetings describes it like this, “Often times the first 20 or 30 minutes of our meetings would be spent with people flipping through the documents I had sent them over a week ago. They had not prepared and had no idea what questions I was going to ask in the next few minutes.

Meetings consume huge amounts of personal and actual corporate time, and often, because they are poorly planned or conducted, they end up wasting the time of those attending. SharePoint can make meetings more effective.

Whether your company holds one meeting once a week or dozens of meetings a day it is essential that this time is used efficiently and effectively. Most meetings are less effective than they could be not because they are poorly managed, but because meeting managers spend actually all of their time focusing on the one or two hours when people will be gathered around the conference table or video screen. Smart meeting managers know that it is the actions you take during the three days immediately before the meeting which are much more important than the meeting itself.

The key to making your meeting successful begins long before the scheduled start-time of your actual meeting. Just as any athlete knows the importance of stretching before exercising, top-level meeting managers know that how you spend your time the week prior to a meeting is as important as or more important than the actual meeting time itself.

Common signs that a manager has spent too much time focusing on the actual meeting itself and not enough time focusing on the activity leading up to the meeting include people coming to your meetings unprepared, a few people suggesting many of the ideas, and a consistent pattern of rushing through the items at the bottom of your key agenda. SharePoint will enable individuals to overcome this issue.