How to organize effective meetings and get results from meetings

Poor preparation, confused allocation of tasks and responsibilities, lack of punctuality ... are your meetings time consuming, demoralizing and a money pit?

You can turn your meetings into productive discussions and outcomes with the help of these tips:

1- Set specific goals

Set Meeting Goals

The success of a meeting held in preparation. To be effective, you must do it only when you know what it will be used. Define the objectives of this meeting allows to decline the agenda. Establish it in a clear and concise manner, detailing the themes. This will determine the time required for the meeting and perhaps eliminate some points. We must be reasonable: a usual two-hour meeting work is usually sufficient.







2- Choose the right participants

Meeting Participants

Make sure that all present employees have a real interest in taking part in the meeting. A good remedy against boredom and possible yawning ... The facilitator may also provide for the presence of certain people for part of the meeting, according to the points raised. Participants often arrive with a blank notepad and pen, then it would come with a folder containing the history of meetings and a presentation of their intervention.

To hunt the spirit of improvisation and inefficiency that follows, tell your employees in advance of the holding of the meeting, the agenda and schedule of its amplitude. Ask them clearly to prepare for a built debate by saying for example on every invitation you would expect from so and so to intervene on a particular issue. They prepare all the more they will know how much time will be given to each point. To optimize the dynamics of trade, do not exceed eight or ten people per meeting.


3- Pay attention to the environment

A Meeting Room

The place where the meeting will take place is important. To make the presence of the boss less burdensome, avoid his desk. The choice of a meeting room is therefore more appropriate. Avoid the blind rooms - participants get tired more quickly if they are not illuminated by the light of day - and the concrete walls that reflect sound, and prefer light walls. To the facilitator at the center of the group, the ideal is a table "U". In exceptional meetings and long lasting, a break is needed at least every two hours. If possible, avoid the niche 14 hours- 16 hours, time of day when the brain is less alert due to digestion.

4- Follow a schedule

Setting Fixed Meeting Agenda

Warn the participants that the meeting will start on time. This is the best way for it to finish on time, simple rule of respect for the organization of work of each. If someone arrives late, the presenter can pause the course of the meeting to get noticed. We bet that the latecomer will pay more attention to his watch at next appointment.
Also make sure to respect the agenda and the time allocated in advance for each issue. If two thirds of invited participants do not have the time to address them, they may prove frustrated to have worked for nothing and to be disappointed by the meeting. The facilitator should therefore not hesitate to call to order the "windbags".




5- Animate listening
The choice of the supervisor as meeting facilitator is often not the best: the function needs not to be done by one of the most involved participants. Guarantor of the rhythm of the meeting, the facilitator speaks little and shows able to speak other to achieve the objectives. It regulates the time. When a new problem threatens to monopolize the discussion, he treats it as a separate item on the agenda and postpones.
Also be aware that conflicts often emerge during meetings. "If an important point involves two interlocutors, we must not let them monopolize the floor, but getting them to meet to discuss it outside, and communicate the results to the next meeting for example.

6- Establish clear rules
A meeting always starts with the clear wording of the topics to the agenda and the expected timing for each item. Indeed, the participants do not necessarily have all noted. The facilitator must pass a kind of contract with the group to fit the spirit of the meeting. In early meeting, it establishes the principle that those who want to make a critique against-offer, then to discuss all the proposals. "With a positive review, the debate will be constructive. If certain points are not addressed, they will be deferred to the next meeting. This presentation early in the session should not last more than two minutes.

7- Synthesize results
At the end of meeting, the facilitator summarizes, orally, arrested decisions, missions of each by the next meeting and the points still under discussion, to be included on a future agenda.

With these points, you can get productive meetings and outcomes.

Do you have other pointers that we can add to this list? Let us know, we will be glad to include them here.

Corporate Ethics, Company Social Responsibility: just buzzwords, reality or illusion?

A very competitive market, financial crunches and the ‘not-fixed’ buying behavior of the consumer has put the debate on the ethics of companies and business organizations in the forefront.
This article looks at the relationship between ethics and management. Ethics is a fundamental skill for professionals who need to make sense of their activity, make the most accurate decisions possible and be able to justify or argue them.

Ethics can be a key dimension of management for growing businesses. You will be successful if you are sensitive towards the need to meet the expectations of your stakeholders: guests who want to be reassured about the products they buy; suppliers seeking partnership relations based on trust; employees seeking a healthy work environment, and meaning to their commitment.

The objective is not, in my opinion, to exploit ethics, because that would be "monstrous", but to "operationalize" this and more precisely in a professional context.

Definition: Ethics is looking for the right decision in a given work situation, that is to say the decision which can satisfy a balanced way the interests of different stakeholders.

The lack of ethics simply falls sometimes a lack of professionalism. The search for the right decision indeed requires both technical skills and ethical competence. The professional achievement involves a consideration of the ethical dimension of trade.

Ethics is a key dimension of management for companies, increasingly aware of the need to meet the expectations of their stakeholders:

- Shareholders wishing to secure the strategy and management of the business
- Customers want to promote sustainable development through their purchases and reassurance on products
- Suppliers seeking to develop partnership relations based on trust
- Employees need training and a healthy work environment, giving meaning to their commitment.

Ethics and business: serenity factor

The skills and ethics of individuals thrive in an organizational environment and managerial structuring. Ethical practices create serenity along-with success. What more can anyone ask for?
That is why the development of ethics and professional competence is accompanied by a reflection on the key roles of management and the processes to implement the cooperation between individuals.

The exemplary management is, in fact, crucial to the success of projects of any company or organization.


Ethics, "tool" of management?

In terms of management, it seems to me that there are three main levers to deploy an ethical approach and articulate performance.

- The first lever refers to what I call the cultural control - again, each of the terms can generate debate: ethics is a management and monitoring tool; and as long as we do not dare to say things and call them by name, one will have worries, since people are not fooled. Ethics is a means of reviewing, based on predictability of behavior, readability.

- The second lever, which I could measure the importance of working professions - care professions, business purchases, sales, management is the need for benchmarks and support tools for decision making.

- The last lever, which is very important in management in general and local management in particular, as in relations with the company's external environment (sale, purchase), is the ability to generate confidence.

An ethical approach: What are the Conditions for Success?

Under what conditions an ethical approach is effective and likely to succeed?

• It must first articulate the ethical approach to business strategy, and it's not so easy.

• Very Important - Ethical approach is collaborative, based on the co-construction of content.

• The establishment of assessment tools: the problem of the evaluation was little attention, since ethics is regarded as non-assessable in nature.

Corporate Ethics and Company Stress

We always talk about ethics as something positive, but ethics can be very stressful, especially for employees, because of the uncertainty. This process is difficult to implement and limits freedom to look for ‘short-cuts’ in areas of real uncertainty.

It therefore becomes very essential for the leader to ensure that ethical way of working flows from top to bottom and open communication channels are encouraged so that the entire team works as a cohesive unit towards achieving profitability and community benefit at the same time.

Corporate Social Responsibility: Where do Indian companies stand?
Indian companies including Flipkart, Snapdeal or even MNCs like Amazon or Ebay have not done anything considerable when it comes to CSR. All these companies should be looking at contributing more to the society, especially when there are so many areas India could need professional and financial help on(from the private sector).

All companies are spending huge amount of money on advertising about their Online Sales and Offers in Indian Newspapers and Indian TV Channels. Many companies including Amazon.in are now sponsoring reality shows. If they could divert some funds to social causes, they will not only win consumers, they will become pioneers in a trend other companies are bound to follow. Diwali is coming up and if companies can look at more CSR and less ad spend, it could be a deal maker!

What is time management? And How Do I plan my time optimally?

Time management is the systematic and disciplined method of planning your time. The purpose of time management is to have more time for the important things in your work and in your personal life. You can win an amazing amount of time every day through systematic scheduling.

TIME Management gives you more time for yourself

Through a targeted time management, you have more time that you can use freely. It's time management but not that you free up more time for work, so you can squeeze in during the 12 hours that you work with every day's work for 15 hours. Instead, you should create more freedom with your time management, for example, for recreation, for ways to recharge your batteries, hobbies or other projects that are important to you. So you can generally lead a more balanced and therefore happier life.

Better time management will help you not only help you to gain time, but it also helps you to do the really important things. This allows you to be more successful and happier. And you ultimately less work with these tasks than before because you always have the consistent focus on the essentials, the important things in looking through a systematic time management. So you can identify problems and potential trouble spots in advance. In the initial stage, such situations can usually resolve with much less effort than if you are already in the middle.

But you should ask yourself: Do you really want more time?

People who constantly have too little time to act, important and deserve appropriate in our society. Because of this, many people resist - perhaps unconsciously - to better time management. We are often no longer even used to having time for ourselves. Before dealing seriously with time management, you should make a conscious decision whether you want to really have more time. Otherwise, it could be that you boycott it. And then all time saving techniques will not help.

Inventory: How much time you consume?

If you want to improve your handling of the time, you should first look at where your time is actually going. To eliminate time wasters, you first have to know what steals your time.

What areas are there in your life?

First, you can think again, in which different areas your life is divided, and how much time you spend in each area. An Example:

·         I'm working, working about 40 hours a week + 8 hours driving distance.

·         I play handball in a club and there I spend about 5 hours a week with my training.

·         I run my household and need approximately 9 hours a week for this.

·         With my friends I spend about 6 hours a week.

·         Other Areas

Get an overview of your current life.

Check first inventory with a time stamp

To get an accurate picture of your actual time consumption, you should do the following for a week.

Write in a time protocol exactly how much time you spend on what activities in your life, from getting up to going to sleep. 

This requires a bit of discipline, but you see exactly how much time you actually use for what. Select one week as normal as possible and not just the holiday season or any other time.

Analyze your time protocol

After a week, you can analyze your time-log. 

Find the activities for which you invest most of the time. Ask for each of the activities, if you are still willing to spend so much time on it. You may also wish to spend more time on some activities than before? For this time, you have to cut somewhere else. 

You can learn this way of your time-log to see if and how you want to design your daily routine in order to spend more time on the things you want to. 

Here you must meet any requirements or make someone else happy. Do not judge too hard on yourself if you find that you fritter away or spend a lot of time with things that are not so important to you - yes, you have the option to change at any time.

Scheduling - Part 1 

After you get an overview of your tasks and about what you want to achieve, you can begin with the actual scheduling.

Planning spare time

Many people claim that they have too much to do to plan. Planning saves time and results of planned time schedule have often a better quality in terms of output of final result. Previously to plan well, it meant to work smarter, now it means how best to utilize your time.

Plan daily for 5 to 15 minutes

Reserve 5 to 15 minutes uninterrupted time for planning. For example, the time in the morning after breakfast, so that you can plan the current day. Or you can also plan about the next day in the evening before going to bed.

A weekly schedule is possible

You can plan for the entire next week at the weekend or on a Monday morning. The weekly schedule has the advantage that your focus is more on the long-term and strategic results. Plan for a week, but you still need to check your daily-schedule and consider for contingencies in your plan.

Plan in Writing and keep plans results-oriented

Your planning should be in writing. 

Start with the question: "What are the most important things I want to do today or need to do today" 

The answers to this question - your tasks - should be written.

Formulate your tasks results-oriented, as if the result of the task would be ready. Instead of "write review" write "report is completed." You ultimately want to achieve a result and not write the report for the sake of the activity. The phrase "report completed" can also be more likely to open the possibility to delegate the task.

 

Scheduling - Part 2 

Not all tasks have the same importance or urgency. Therefore, it is useful to distinguish tasks. Our next post will cover this in detail.