Unstructured Meeting Costs Rise: Use a Proven Structured Technique
Meeting costs to American businesses as a result of poorly run meetings (typically unstructured) continue to rise. Surveys indicate that on average managers waste: 8.5 hours per week for low-level management 10.4 hours per week for middle-level...
Stop Meeting Scope Creep with Precise Questions
Scope creep kills a lot of projects. Scope creep kills many more meetings. The hardest task to accomplish in leading a group of people is to get them to focus. Their minds drift, twist, and become partially selective. When the right group of people...
Facilitate Consensual Prioritization Using a Perceptual Map
A perceptual map works well when the PowerBall approach is not robust enough, yet many of your attributes and criteria remain fuzzy and subjective. Thus we are able to help a team compare and prioritize its options using a rich visual display,...
How to Calculate Total Factor Productivity as an Indicator
Measure the increase in productivity per employee using the formula for Total Factor Productivity. Accomplishment may be measured by the increase in productivity per employee. For many, calculating productivity has been nebulous and...
How to Facilitate Alignment and Confirm Balance
When you facilitate alignment, you help groups identify gaps, omissions, and overkill, and confirm the appropriateness and balance of their action plan. Rationale to Facilitate Alignment Building consensus around alignment can be very challenging,...
How to Build Stakeholder Analysis and Consensual Understanding
Begin stakeholder analysis by identifying and examining how each interacts with the organization when they provide or receive services or benefits. External or internal people, systems, and other groups comprise stakeholders. They interact with the...
Building Agendas to Deliver the Output You Need from Your Meeting
You should use these steps when building agendas because following them will increase your meeting success and personal reputation. Before we begin, let us remember the definition of a solid, structured meeting agenda: Agenda Defined An agenda is a...
Become a Humane Human, Understand WHY Behind WHAT
The opposite of being a humane human. Road Rage. Have you been irritated by someone else’s driving? Of course, we all have. Today I realized however that I am likely guilty of doing the precise thing that others have done to piss me off. However,...
Data Transformation — How to convert a single piece of data into a visual display of 16 elements
With data transformation, each piece of data or single cell might be decomposed into another layer. Amplify this approach even further by splitting your four cells into sixteen. Therefore, see the chart below. We can now ask, generate, and record...
Facilitate a Decision Matrix to Document Supporting Rationale
A decision matrix supports both decision-making and decision quality at the same time. A decision matrix can be viewed as the ‘logic’ behind all decisions, providing the rationale for both the support and reasons to de-select or de-emphasize one of...
Voting Sucks Because it Leads to Bigger Numbers but Lower Quality Decisions
Western society, and to an increasing amount, the rest of the world, depends on the voting method of decision-making. Various levels of government including federal, state, and local elections rely on plurality voting, whereby one person equals one...
Attitude of Gratitude Makes for More Powerful Facilitation
The evidence is overwhelming—those who have more gratitude, or an attitude of gratitude --- are happier individuals. Although you won’t hear the term ‘happy’ very frequently in one of our meetings or workshops (because the word is both subjective...
A Quick, 5-Minute Paradigm Exercise to Challenge Groupthink
We encourage professional facilitators to carry a toolbox. Include some intervention devices when you need to shake up your participants. Be prepared to challenge groupthink if you start hearing things like . . . That will never change. We don’t do...
Process Improvement Questions to Ask When Leading an Initiative
Organizational process improvement questions depend on the points of view. From an executive perspective, fewer participants and lower costs indicate process improvement. However, from an employee or member point of view, getting more done quickly...
To Lead Faster Meetings Requires Explaining the White Space, the WHY Before the WHAT
To effectively control your meetings and finish faster meetings (ahead of schedule) requires an effort that begins long before your meeting starts. We call the preparation period 7:59 work, as in before 8:00 AM. After the meeting starts, you can...
Stop wasting time and money!
With Meetings That Get Results, you’ll learn how to lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results every time. More important, how to avoid the worst possible outcome from any meeting—another meeting!
Developed from over 17+ years of research, delivery, and practice, including 15,000+ hours providing live instruction using Certified curriculum, Meetings That Get Results provides you with the tools and methods necessary to lead meetings that generate clear and actionable results, with deliverables that participants both understand and own.
“An essential handbook for any leader or facilitator of meetings. Especially as we have transitioned to more remote-based collaboration, I value all the tips to lead global team meetings.”
— Sana A. Manjeshwar, Global Principal Ombuds Manager, Chevron