Escape From Meeting Hell

 

"I'm so bored I'm cutting myself with a plastic fork"

Make 'em laugh

Sheldon Arora, CEO of Esoftsolutions, an IT systems company in Plano, Texas, does not want gloomy meetings. So the last person into the room at the monthly companywide meeting has to tell a joke. That sets a relaxed tone and also gets seats filled on time.

Then, at the end of the meeting, Arora settles up on his wagers with employees. A year ago, at a company happy hour, Arora overheard a few younger sales folks bragging about the numbers they were going to hit, so he proposed a little bet. If they hit the targets, dinner at a Dallas restaurant was on him; if they didn't, they'd go up in front of the next meeting to perform a song. They ended up singing Kool & The Gang's "Celebration" on company time, and since then the bets have become a staple that the employees love. Things don't always go the CEO's way, either. One lost bet reduced Arora to carting around a napkin and tray while serving coffee as the butler for a day. "I'm willing to make a fool of myself," says Arora, "because the return on investment is so high."

"This meeting has all the excitement of sitting in traffic"

Spark up a confrontation

Name-calling and fisticuffs should be off-limits in the conference room, but confrontation should be stoked and allowed to breathe. "Conflict is the spark of creativity," says John G. Miller. If employees keep quiet because they fear what they say will come back to haunt them or unconsciously ask themselves whether they'll be punished for challenging the status quo, then no revolutionary ideas will come out of the meeting. It's a good thing when people are fired up and have strong opinions about the direction of the business; it means they care.

Alex Lekas, a vice president at Web hosting and servicing company Advanced Internet Technologies in Fayetteville, N.C., says his company thrives on confrontational communication. Now, Army guys founded AIT, so maybe verbal combat is less intimidating to them, but all companies should inspire and foster passion. "We encourage skepticism, because every project is going to have proponents and opponents," says Lekas. "We want honest discussions and vigorous arguments."

"No one retains a thing"

Let's review

Meetings frequently accelerate in the latter stages because everyone wants out. But a quick recap at the end can go a long way toward ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Pamela Schindler, director of the Center for Applied Management at Wittenberg University, has been researching how to make meetings an efficient "process of work" for years. She believes that meetings should have a clear outcome that is recapped at the end in a five-minute synthesis report. If you want everyone to walk out knowing exactly what they're supposed to do, don't leave without "thinking through the meeting," as Schindler says, by revisiting the major points. And Schindler says that clarifying the potential outcomes, the next steps, and who is responsible for each step has another upside: "The real joy of synthesis is realizing how many meetings you won't need."

 PREV  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5  NEXT