“A meeting,” said one pun- dit, “is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.”
The average executive spends half of his or her week in meetings. Of this, about six hours’ worth, according to several stud- ies, is rated as totally unnecessary. Yet, in many businesses, meetings have
Learning to Say No 85
How Not to Take No for an Answer
Of course, the opposite problem of learning how to say no is getting oth- ers to say yes.The solution is persist- ence.
In sales, the single most common reason for failure to close the deal is that the salesperson never asks for the business.The seller tiptoes around the question, never coming right out and asking the customer to say yes. And, when the first response is no, even those salespeople who bothered to ask tend to give up.
You need to be able to say no and mean it, but you may have to be per- sistent enough to get others to say yes.
become a ritual and committees are a duty, so that it’s nearly impossible to say no to them.
Your job: to ensure that the meetings you attend result in a sleek, productive use of everyone’s time. If you run the meet- ing, your task requires commitment to time management prin- ciples. If you’re a participant, your challenge is more acute: to subtly guide the group to productive activity. Here are 12 guide- lines that will help you increase a meeting’s productivity.
1. Create a written agenda for each meeting.Make sure it’s dis- tributed to all participants at least 24 hours in advance. (Figure 7-1 shows a sample agenda form.) If you’re asked to attend a meeting scheduled by someone else, request that he or she pro-
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To _______________________ Meeting Date ____________________
From _____________________ Start Time ______________________
Mailing Date _______________ End Time _______________________
# Attached Pages ___________ Location ________________________
Topics to Be Covered (in order) Presented By Time 1. ________________________ __________________ __________
2. ________________________ __________________ __________
3. ________________________ __________________ __________
4. ________________________ __________________ __________
5. ________________________ __________________ __________
6. ________________________ __________________ __________
7. ________________________ __________________ __________
8. ________________________ __________________ __________
Key Meeting Objectives/Goals
Premeeting Preparation
Figure 7-1. Sample meeting agenda form
vide you with a written agenda in advance.
2. Assign the meeting a clear start time. Check for conference room availability. Equally important: the meeting shouldn’t be delayed for late arrivals. Participants will soon learn that you expect them to be prompt. (Of course, leave room for excep- tional circumstances or essential people.)
3. Assign an official closing time to the meeting. Open-ended meetings can drag on, with participants mired in trivial or ancil- lary concerns. A tight finish time disciplines participants to work more efficiently and with fewer tangents. Shorter meetings tend to concentrate discussions on the real goals of the meeting and keep it focused. If the meeting length must expand, it should be by the consensus of all the participants. And if the meeting was scheduled by someone else, ask that he or she set a finish time.
4. Set at least one goal for your meeting.A meeting without clear objectives is rudderless. A committee meeting should have a “para-goal.” Concentrate on how the meeting should achieve the component objectives of that goal.
5. Be reasonable about the number of topics to be covered.
Having established a start time, a finish time, and a set of goals, you should be able to designate a reasonable number of sub- jects for discussion. An agenda too tight with topics is doomed from the start. If you must cover a sizable number of themes, consider the following:
• Establish a later finish time.
• Postpone less important priorities to the next meeting.
• Divide your meeting into simultaneous or separate sub- meetings that deal with fewer topics.
• Create a separate meeting during which the whole group will tackle what cannot be covered in the time allotted.
6. Invite only the necessary people. People who plan meetings often feel they should invite everyone even remotely interested in what’s going on. This is a serious mistake. The time it takes to get things done in a meeting expands geometrically with the
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number of its participants. Be merciless when inviting people to attend. An observation: meetings and committees function best with six members at most. With more, the gathering becomes less productive and more of a forum for views. Generally, the true, often unstated purpose of such a large meeting is to pro- tect democratic decision making (or, at least, its image).
7. Never schedule a meeting because it’s customary. Many companies have the weekly “Monday morning conference.”
Many need it—but does yours? Or do most regularly scheduled meetings encourage people at your workplace to think up things to say? If so, it might be time to reconsider that tradition.
In effect, you’ll be saying no to an obligation that, ultimately, may have minimal value.
8. Never require a group of people to work on something that one person could do just as easily. Before you schedule any meeting, add up the hourly salaries of all participants and multi- ply that number by the projected meeting duration. That will sober you up. It will also open up alternatives, like canceling the meeting in favor of proposals that get circulated to all relevant personnel for comments.
9. Create an environment for productivity. Use the checklist of environmental factors (sidebar) prior to your next meeting.
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Checklist of Environmental Factors for a Meeting
❏Is lighting conducive to productivity and mood?
❏Would a room with windows open up the space or lead to distrac- tions?
❏Does the configuration of the table encourage good work commu- nication?
❏Are the chairs comfortable?
❏Is the temperature favorable for concentration?
❏Are audiovisuals in place?
❏Do drinks, snacks, and décor make the room user-friendly?
❏Is the room free from all but essential interruptions?
10. Establish an idea bin. On a flipchart, transparency, or white- board, list all ideas that the meeting generates. Doing so can also guide the person who is taking the official notes.
An interesting variation: create a “tangent bin” flipchart sheet (tape it to the wall). All tangents should be listed on it and, time permitting, they can be taken up toward the meet- ing’s end. This is a powerful way to diffuse digressions.
11. At the meeting’s close, orally summarize all agreements, assignments, and decisions. Consensus is integral to a meet- ing’s success. This is also the time for participants to pose clari- fying questions, to fill out any details missing from the group’s action plan, to reinforce accomplishments, and, if appropriate, to set the next meeting.
12. Via a written meeting summary, list all steps to be taken to fulfill the meeting’s consensus. The Meeting Summary Form (Figure 7-2, page 90) provides you with a document to pin down agreed-upon efforts, assignments, and deadlines. In essence, it’s a pared-down, action-oriented version of the vener- able minutes. Figure 7-3 (page 91) summarizes the steps of an effective meeting.