I believe I mentioned this some time ago in another post called Meetings about Meetings .

Anyway, it’s time for an update. A while back one Core manager volunteered to read a book I had bought about meeting excellence and how we can improve meetings at Argos. She presented her results at the Core meeting and we decided that we would like to implement many of the ideas in this book.

Basically, the idea is that everyone in a business has a limited amount of time and as a result it’s really important that when you have a meeting, that you run it as effectively as possible. That way everyone involved saves times. I guess we’ve all been in meetings at different points in our working lives and have wondered “what the hell I am doing here?” or have left the meeting feeling that nothing has been resolved.

It turns out that there are some simple tools and tricks that can help avoid these types of outcomes. I won’t go into all the details right here and now because if you haven’t received a training on how meetings will be run at Argos, you will be receiving one shortly. Personally I think the most important aspect of the meeting is deciding whether to have one or not. This is very well defined in the meeting guideline materials, i.e., no purpose = no meeting. You should be able to ask yourself, what happens if we don’t have this meeting. If the answer is nothing seriously bad then avoid it. The point is to avoid unnecessary meetings. We’ve definitely improved the core meetings a lot. We really meet much less often because we take this credo very seriously. As a result some discussions get moved to emails where those who want to participate can, but not everyone’s time is taken up.

Another positive change is that for some meetings we can use a sharepoint workspace that we developed. This is a very helpful tool if you have regular meetings and you need to look back and see what was decided or if you want to add and change agendas online.

Other than that there is an element of fun in the new way we are running meetings because we created some “Meeting Monster” cards which can be handed out to people who break the rules of meetings. As a result if you are in a meeting and your colleague keeps interrupting you can take the Interrupting Igor card and throw it at him/her (OK, maybe not throw it, but place it nicely in front of the person in question).

Anyway, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved for their hard work in implementing this. It is a big positive change at Argos and I really believe it’s important that everyone follows these simple rules. Since meetings are a key aspect of company life, running them as efficiently and effectively as possible will make a big difference in the overall operation of the company.

Happy Meetings!