Minimizing Meetings

The one thing both leaders and employees bemoan is the number of meetings that are held and how unproductive most of them are.

It doesn’t have to be this way. My Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program is designed to provide continuous improvement, week in and week out, with just one meeting a week. Before we get into the specifics of the program’s weekly meeting, let’s see what those using this system have to say:

“I replaced one-on-one meetings with team meetings, which has been a game changer. This shift has brought our team closer together and made the process much more enjoyable. We now use this meeting format every week.”– Nate Cohen, Cohen Woodworking

“The increase in communication within my group has resulted in many projects now ahead of schedule…my new hires are amazed at how much we accomplish with so few people.” – Steven Dohner, Dohner Plumbing Company

“By restructuring our staff meetings to discuss staff priorities based on critical deadlines and goals, the staff is finally able to dialog with each other to ensure and direct each others efforts in a manner most beneficial to the entire division.” – Susan Poling, Planning and Design Chief, St. Louis County Parks and Recreation

The owner of a concrete construction company, within a month, cut her billing cycle from three weeks to two days, freed up $350,000 in cash, paid off her line of credit and left it untapped for four consecutive months. When the owner took off time to start a family, the office manager got permission to bring me back to train the team on how to run the meetings because “Things are falling through the cracks.”

An residential HVAC contractor said, “I now learn more about what’s going on in my business in just 2 hours than I used to learn in a whole week.”

Now that you have a sense for what Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal accomplishes, let see why it works.

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal

This program replaces the countless, mostly unproductive meetings with one weekly meeting that:

• Engages your employees in setting their goals and priorities for the coming week in a team environment.
• Adds accountability in the form of peer pressure…it’s hard to admit failings in a group environment.
• Facilitates cross training without creating anxiety among employees about their continued employment.
• Improves coordination among employees in your group.
• Builds team spirit and a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves.

Each successive meeting after the initial meeting includes:

• Celebrating each employees’ successes…a real confidence builder.
• Employees establishing goals and priorities for the coming week…with very limited involvement on your part.
• No follow up by you during the course of the week. Employees live up to or down to your expectations. When you trust them to perform well, they don’t disappoint you.

The program also teaches leaders what language to use in the meeting to:

• Build confidence and team spirit in the group.
• Deal with those who are overly aggressive or overly cautious in their goal setting.
• Remove consistently poor performers in just three weeks…while minimizing the threat of wrongful termination suits.
• Use your team as internal consultants.
• Increase the flexibility of your staff to weather illness, deaths and vacation times.

Takeaways

You can minimize time lost to meetings, improve productivity each and every week, enjoy camaraderie beyond anything any of you have experienced previously…with a single weekly meeting that initially may take two hours, but will quickly be accomplished in less than an hour per week.

You can enjoy the admiration of your colleagues and competitors as your staff accomplishes more with less effort (and far fewer meetings) with the Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program.

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.