How To Conduct A Successful Business Meeting

The facilitator should be a good process facilitator capable of helping people maintain the ownership of the process and the outcome. This person is res- ponsible for guiding and influencing the flow of development by looking at all sides of the observation made by a participant.
Guidelines we have found that contribute to effective meetings.
Here are a few guidelines that we have found makes meetings effective.
Clearly Communicated and Distributed Agenda - Purpose of the meeting. Once you have determined that a physical meeting is necessary either at a location or via teleconference, you must determine what the purpose of the meeting is, who should attend and put together the agenda, with or without the input from the participants. A meeting location should be confirmed and booked, refreshments and food ordered, participants contacted well ahead of schedule, presenter given enough time to prepare presentation. Solicit input for the structure of the meeting from presenters and others, if necessary. If there is a need for participants to teleconference, a bridge and time should be booked. This agenda should be sent well ahead of schedule (possibly in form of a memorandum) to all participants. A day before the meeting, send a reminder. Bring extra copies of the meeting agenda to the meeting. The agenda should detail:
Date and starting time and ending time
Meeting location (map included, if necessary)
List of participants and presenters.
Subjects covered so participants can review and bring material to the meeting for discussion.
Time limit for presentations or topics so speakers are motivated to present their specific points.
Ensure that the meeting is a dialogue and not a discussion (if it is not merely a presentation). Meetings should not be confused with presentations, manage- ment update, forums, and other one-way communication activities. To get the most out of meetings, ensure that the meetings are held in a dialogue mode, with other guidelines added for success. If participants of the meeting are not educated in the dialogue
Assign a Scribe. As the meeting coordinator or owner of the meeting and its process, it is necessary that you assign a impartial person to act as a scribe (note taker). Inform this person of what types of notes that you expect him/her to take. Provide this person with a laptop computer or the least an agenda with space for notes.
Assign a Facilitator /Timekeeper. The Facilitator/timekeeper's duties are to con-trol the meeting to ensure that it follows the agenda, guide the dialogue (pro- cess), distill fact findings, and control and maintain the Q&A session, and to provide input to ensure that the meeting is successful. A regular sports-time watch can be used to time speakers and the round robin session.
Round Robin Q&A session. A Round Robin Q&A session often follows after a presentation has been made. Each participants is allotted two minutes to speaking his/her mind and address questions, concerns or inputs to the pre- senter. In the first round every participant must speak. In the second and third rounds, participants may defer from offering their input or yield the time to ano-ther participant. It is the facilitator's role to guide this process, to ensure that Q&A session is in line with the topic at hand. The facilitator will also ensure that a dialogue is properly maintained, and review and distill the findings. The facili- tator will aid the owner of the meeting to determine what issues to be put on the parking lot list (a list detailing certain issues assigned to owners for future action/handling).
Team communications. To continue the dialogue and the success of the team learning, certain communications and protocols should be maintained to conti- nue the free flow of shared meaning, and to resolve issues that came up. The issues put on the parking lot that cannot be resolved at the meeting, should be assigned to a particular owner with a timeline for successful completion and delivery to the team. An action register for these particular issues should be discussed and completed by the team. Weekly activity reporting of these by the owner of the issues to the team should be maintained. You may put aside a time for review of previous accomplishments. The team will also decide upon the time for the next scheduled session. After the meeting, the scribe should write up the meeting minutes and other team communications and deliver it to the meeting owner for distribution to the participants.
Last thought on making meetings effective
The dialogue approach to team learning has proved very effective in my expe- rience. It is recommended that you follow this approach in structuring your meetings. The culture, education level, type of activity and many other factors will determine the final structure of your various meetings. Naturally some meetings will take a different form than others. You may add to this structure any aspects that can greatly influence the outcome and accomplishment of your meetings. If you follow these guidelines, your meetings will become more effec-tive.