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!