And the purpose of this meeting was……….
It’s happened to everyone. You walk out of a meeting and you say to yourself “and the purpose of this meeting was……..?” Your time and energies were sucked out of you by the meeting room vacuum while work piles up back at your desk. This is clearly not the way to increase employee morale or engage employees.
I do my best to make things simple – it’s what I talk about about and it’s how I work with clients. I encourage people to come up with easy ideas that will measure their success; no matter how complex the project may be. For example; this is my success measurement tool; it’s a quote:
“The easiest success measurement tool is a simple question. What did you do today to move forward? The easiest project plan on earth is also a simple question. What will you do tomorrow to move forward?At the end of each day, document your success and design your next move.” – Rich DiGirolamo
Pretty simple. Doesn’t involve graphs, charts, matrices, and forms. Doesn’t involve a status meeting or conference call; not that all those things don’t have their place. It’s two simple questions I ask myself each day to keep on track. And even on the days when I’m feeling a bit less than productive I can usually answer these two questions in the positive.
Which brings me back to those meetings. People often comment to me about not only the number of meetings they attend, but the number of useless meetings they attend. It’s one of the reasons I suggest people use the Meeting Playce Mat as a place to document meeting activity. If you’ve got to be there, you might as well make it a little fun. But in my never ending battle to make life a bit simpler for people and to remove some of the craziness from those things that drive you crazy at work……………………..Here is Rich’s Two-Step Plan to a successful meeting:
- At the beginning of the meeting (or even better, when you send out the invitation) make the following comment: The purpose of this meeting is ____________________.
- At the end of the meeting make the following comment to the group: And the purpose of this meeting was ________________.
Hopefully the two answers are somewhat the same. Hopefully you also have enough trust within the organization that allows people to tell the truth if they are not.
Now when you leave the office take this one more step; what other areas of your life could use a two step measurement tool? Try and identify them.
