

Stop Wasting People’s Time and Start Setting Agendas - kapilkaisare
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=350

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makecheck
Agenda or not, the caller of the meeting needs the personality to shut people
down who take tangents. I have seen plenty of organized people who are just
too nice to take control of their meetings (agenda in hand).

Learn to say "okay, good, write that down and tell us more over E-mail". Treat
every 5-10 minutes as a deadline, and if a discussion has not been productive
or is too emotional, just skip that item as unresolved to make sure everything
else is covered. And if there is evidence that attendees are unprepared, e.g.
haven't even read what they were supposed to base discussion on, just end the
meeting.

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candre717
One tip is to verbally allocate at the start how much time should be spent on
specific topics. Everybody gets the point when you say, "Okay, we'll spend
five minutes on x, ten minutes on y, and the rest of the meeting outlining z."

Another is to share material prior to the meeting, so that people are up to
speed and there are no surprises.

