How to have a Productive Business Meeting

Everyone knows how unproductive and a waste of precious time meetings are! They simply consume important man-hours without producing any tangible results. However, if you are really interested in getting results from such meetings, you can do so provided you take certain precautions. You can still manage to bring people together, create an atmosphere that facilitates decision making, delegate responsibility and build up an ambience conducive to team effort within the company. Here's how you can go about it.

• Inform everyone concerned about the purpose of the meeting. Circulate an agenda that shows the planned steps that will get the meeting to achieve its aim. This way, the participants get adequate time to prepare and anticipate the kind of relevant information they may be expected to give. It serves to bind the participants to a definite 'contract' in which they are expected to use their time productively.
• Always be punctual. Start and finish the meetings as scheduled. A rudderless meeting is about the worst you can have where the participants rattle on and on until everyone gets tired. What you should do is erect virtual firewalls - see that you provide structure and be absolutely firm about respecting everyone's time. Allow for short breaks in between.
• The chair should take complete control of the meeting and give everyone a chance to participate in the discussions and voice their views. For this you have to act as a referee even while as a leader, you focus on facilitating, summarizing, clarifying and generally just on keeping things moving. Keep a tight tab on the time and wrap up each speaker when his/her time is over. Having a definite theme for the meeting will help focus on exactly why the meeting is happening.
• If it is possible, disallow any 'electronic grazing'. While the meeting is in progress, laptops should be closed and mobiles switched off. There are fewer things that are more distracting than having to see someone check his email every five minutes or check his phone for any calls. Instead, schedule breaks when people can do all their checking up outside. But once the meeting is under way, insist that no one fiddles with their 'toys'. It is for the chair to enforce these unspoken rules.
• Any item that can be resolved between just two or three people outside the room and about which the others need not be consulted or informed, should be yanked off the agenda so that no time is wasted. Once it is clear that the problem can be solved, move on to the next item. This way, you stay on target and achieve more. Also, do not encourage 'side-bar' conversations and do not allow the participants to stray away from the agenda.
• No speaker should be interrupted when he/she is speaking, however strongly someone might disagree with what is said. If you are the speaker, learn to be brief and keep comments and options relevant to the theme or topic.
• If you have some project manager taking down notes spend a few minutes with him after the meeting and review any major new projects or action items that were generated in the meeting. Have him email the minutes of the meeting to all the participants so that everyone is clear on whatever was discussed and resolved. Make a 'call to action' list, document who is going to follow up on certain tasks and assign deadlines for each task. Distribute this list to all the participants.

Take and make use of all the tips that are applicable to you. Remember that no meeting runs by itself. If you want to make the best possible use of people's time, you will need a firm hand and careful planning. You can soon become noticed as the person whose meetings produce positive results and where the tone and participation in the meetings constantly show steady improvement.

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