Being a business owner has a lot of perks. One of them is having the power to schedule and carry meetings whenever you’d like, about whatever you want them to be about. Gone are the days where you unwillingly accept meeting invites only to count down the minutes until it’s over… as tempting and powerful as this sounds, you should tread efficiently. Abusing the productivity aspect of meetings may actual hurt you in the long haul.
You remember how it was. Your, then boss sending you dozens of seemingly pointless meeting invitations, which you’ve now chalked up to him/her just wanting to hear the sound of their own voice, and sitting there thinking, “what a waste of time.” Don’t make the same mistakes they did. Heed the learnings from these 5 mistakes most meeting-schedulers make.
1.No real subject of the meeting: Before clicking “send,” ask yourself, do you really need to have this meeting or are you just checking in? Instead of annoying, causing anxiety or wasting your employee’s time, how about adopting and implementing a collaborative task tracking software (Basecamp, Salesforce, SharePoint, even Google Docs!). That way, you can see what’s going on without disrupting the flow.
2.Poor timing: This just another example of putting yourself in your employee’s shoes (where you once were) and ask yourself, was I fully engaged in a meeting first thing in morning, right before lunch or an hour before clocking out? We thought so. Fact: when your employee is hungry or exhausted: it will be the only thing they are focused the entire meeting. Do yourself and everyone else a favor and schedule your meeting at a reasonable time.
3.Not maximizing your meeting’s potential: If your company is doing well, we are going to guess that everyone is typically busy most of the time. If a meeting is necessary, make sure you have an agenda and that the meeting has a general flow, as to accomplish the goals of the meeting and not to waste unnecessary time. Additionally, to ensure everyone’s on board with the meeting agenda, send it out ahead of time and ask those invited to be familiar with the content.
4.Inviting the wrong people: You know how it goes; the more people involved, the more opinions, discussions and typically more time wasted with coming up with whatever solution you desired. Also, make sure those who are in attendance add value to the subject at hand. If they can’t add anything to the meeting, don’t waste their time or yours by having them there!
5.No follow up: Did you ever have a meeting where a lot was discussed, deliverables were divvied up and then nothing happened? It’s completely disappointing on all accounts. If you’re orchestrating the meeting, chances are, you’re also going to be the one responsible for making sure the next steps are actually taken by their respective due dates.
You can have a great product, an awesome team and stellar business goals, but if you don’t handle meetings correctly— everything in your business might suffer.
