Meeting or no meetings? What do you think? Are meeting an efficient way to resolve issues and problems that arise in a business? Businesses have a job to do, and meetings have become a vehicle for communication that is not always efficient at solving issues.
A defining moment occurred when I attended a meeting with a department head of sales and client accounts. The senior manager had arranged the meeting after hearing of declining sales and a critical client leaving a month prior. Serious improvements where necessary and it seemed that the manager was unaware of the loss of the account but had seen the declining sales figures from the quarterly report.
It was the overwhelming pressure to keep selling, to continue the status-quo that led the middle management and even senior management to overlook the need for appropriate analysis and to improve the way the departments were conducting themselves.
In this case, it was not too late, and the mistake was corrected. The emergency meeting nipped the problem in the bud. In the past, the accepted opinion was that meetings were an essential approach to sharing goals and objectives, but most of the people attending saw them as a waste of time.
A new approach to the format developed opportunities to collaborate encouraging everyone from management to lower level members to share their opinions.
This refreshing approach removed time-wasting elements. It kept people focused on a few objectives while igniting conversation.
It increased the number of meetings and made them open to everyone to decide if they were a relevant participant rather than general discussions.
The process has proven to be extremely valuable creating surprisingly successful results.
The approaches had allowed for a robust collective focus for the department making the group more efficient and productive.
The company introduced changes in communication protocols within the department that strengthened the department and improved management at senior levels.
In the process, the business found an up and coming star that showed great promise. These additional benefits from the new meeting format further prove that meetings appropriately conducted can empower departments and a company as a whole.
By identifying cultures and issues on a granular level within a business, companies have been able to promote a new environment for meetings where they have seen great success with their clients.
