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Company Meetings Cutting in on Productivity?

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Company meetings serve a wide array of purposes. That being said, can too many meetings be a bad thing?

Having worked at several companies now over a 23-year period, I have seen a variety of approaches to this subject.

Some companies have had a normal approach to in-house meetings, some have had too few meetings, while others have gone overboard and seem to be meeting on an almost hourly basis, whether through onsite meetings or teleconferencing.

I’ve always tended to believe that falling somewhere in the middle of the above-mentioned descriptions is best.

On the one hand, it is important for your team to know what one another are doing; without occasional meetings that is hard to achieve. On the other hand, meeting too often always leads me to wonder how any work is getting done. Too many meetings can lead to micromanaging and a feeling among employees that their every move is being scripted and watched.

If you’re not sure how often your company employees should be meeting to talk strategy, keep these things in mind:

  • What are you trying to accomplish with the meetings in the first place? – Are they held to share strategies, ideas, ask questions of where projects are going? If the answer is yes to any of those things, then by all means meet. If the answer is no to one or more of those things, then you need to rethink why you’re getting staff together;
  • Where does real productivity rank in your company? – While meetings can certainly be productive, they also pull employees away from the tasks they were hired to do in the first place. If you’re team is having to get together on a daily basis to meet even for half an hour, think about the loss of actual productivity time that half hour means to you and your business. I once worked for a company that required its writing team to meet on a daily basis. In lots of the meetings, we repeated what we said the previous day as far as updating our status on projects. In the meantime, I and some others sat there and thought about the wasted time going by when we could have been producing another article, conducting interviews, reaching out to new clients on the phone etc.;
  • Are we getting the same message over and over again? – Another risk factor with having too many meetings is that you will turn off some of your brighter employees. Going over the same message over and over again begins to lead to some tuning out both the message and the messenger. Let’s be honest, some company folks like to hear themselves talk. While that may be great for them, those listening are sitting there thinking about all the real work they could be getting done while listening to something they heard just a week ago. Constructive meetings are one thing, sitting there listening to lectures over and over again are another;
  • Are we stifling openness among employees? – If you’re having too many meetings, you may not even know it. In most offices, employees are not going to raise their hands when polled to respond yes if the company is meeting too often. For most employees, such a move in their minds would rock the boat, painting them as an uncaring employee. In reality, a good office culture is one where openness and the ability to speak one’s mind should be promoted. Without the ability to speak one’s mind in a professional and courteous manner, you are fostering a dictatorship at work, where one and only one voice is heard. Be bold and ask your entire team if they feel the company meets too often. If the answer is yes, take the time to think about how less meeting time can translate into more production time.

 

At the end of the day, each company and its management must decide what is in its best interests.

In my 20+ years of employment nationwide, I have yet to see the perfect meeting environment.

In the meantime, I’m going to meet with myself and see if I can come up with some solutions for this issue.

Photo credit: Markdenham.com

 

Dave Thomas, who covers topics such as starting a small business, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?

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1200x1200--GeniusShared ReadWhere Do You Focus Your Vision?


Take a 60-second look at this lights in this photo then try not to look back again as you answer the questions that follow it.

Now look at this while space for a while as you scroll down to a few questions about what you saw.

Where do you focus your vision? What’s important in your business and your life?

Are You Seeing the Things that Make a Difference to Your Business and Your Life?

Everyday we interact with a world of information that has potential for adding something to our our business, our brand, and our life. But the ways our brains work, the way we jealously guard our time time, we as easily overlook what we’re seeing as finding the fuel and the data that might …

  • to make our work and our lives easier … It’s not that we’re not thoughtful enough to find easier ways. It’s that we’ve forgotten to take time to reflect and think while we keep up our breakneck pace, racing through time to beat a clock that would work for us if took the time to look.
  • make our work and our lives simpler … It’s not that we’re in love with the complicate and difficult. It’s that we’ve come to believe that balance is adding more and more things to juggle without stopping to sort which really deserve our time.
  • make our work and our lives more meaningful and inspired … It’s not that we’re without mission or purpose. It’s that we’ve let our heads get disconnected from our hearts, setting that inspiration at a lower priority, not letting our aspirations fuel our businesses and our lives.

And those those thoughts, those beliefs change our world by changing what we see and how we respond it.

So answer me this, when you saw photo above, did you see …

  • the three lights up front that look like stars and the fourth that did not?
  • the light in the window of the building next door?
  • the trees along the harbor?
  • the reflections in the water?
  • the way the water changes color?
  • the yellow in the sky?
  • the red light under the clouds on the horizon?

Think for a minute about what you saw and what you missed. Were looking with your heart or with your head? Or did you hardly even look?

I started taking photos of the harbor so that I would remember to look. After months of pictures what I’ve found is that the harbor never looks exactly the same twice. The light and color from the sky add mood and flavor. They communicate about the weather that is and the weather is coming. They communicate about my connection to it. And that communication has unlimited power to open my eyes, open my mind, open my heart to what inspires me to what’s important in my business and my life.

Did you believe that you didn’t have time to really look? It’s not just the beautiful harbor. It’s the clouds and colors in the sky that change one day to the next.

It’s not just the “what” of the bar graph. It’s the people behind it that tell you the “why.”
It’s in the looking that we find the nuance, the detail, and the color that inform a business, a brand, and a life. Understand those and your work and your life will become easier, simpler, and more meaningful.

Are you seeing the things that make a difference to your business and your life?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Empower Yourself!

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by LaRae Quy

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It’s an Inside Job

Someone needs to tell the political candidates that personal empowerment is not about power over others. Rather, it is understanding that you are in charge of your own life.

People who are personally empowered know that happiness is an inside job. They don’t wait for someone else to make them happy and they can take care of their own needs for affection.

You Are Responsible For Your Own Actions

In other words, there is no finger pointing and blaming others for your lack of performance. You are willing to take responsibility for your actions. OK, so now it’s very obvious that most political candidates have no personal empowerment—they are just power hungry.

I make this distinction between power and personal empowerment because they are two very different things and people often assume that to be empowered is to be powerful.

Wrong.

Empowerment is a process where you do something, reflect on your actions, assess whether you made the right choice—and why—and continue on. This progression is a very important piece of the puzzle because personal empowerment acknowledges complete responsibility for self and the choices that are made. It is strong enough to look at itself and say, “Badly done, Emma. Badly done,” and then move on, taking with it lessons learned from the experience.

Personal empowerment is not for wimps. It takes a strong character to look at oneself with honesty and decide what to keep and what to throw out.

Where To Begin?

Life unfolds in phases. As we look back over time, we can see when we felt empowered and when we did not. Each time period has it’s own characteristics.

We all spent time as students when our lives revolved around classes, teachers, and other students. The academic calendar was central to all of our planning. Life as a student is a unique time.

Similarly, we are always in different phases of life as we mature and circumstances change. Life is a series of interconnecting phases. So when we stop to take that honest look at ourselves, we will be empowered only to the degree to which we understand what phase of life we’re in.

Our life is bigger than a single moment. The things that we cherish, the goals that motivate us, and the issues we wrestle with are connected to the period in which we currently find ourselves.

We feel lack of personal empowerment when we are unable to make choices that are always in our own best interest. Indeed, it is impossible to feel empowered if we cannot identify the issues that hold us back. We feel out of control when we try to live up to the expectations of others. We give power over our life to others when we allow them to define success or achievement.

But when we let others generate ideas and solutions for our issues, we are no longer taking the lead.

We become the ultimate follower when we are no longer the leader of our own life.

Dig Deeper Into the Now

As an FBI counterintelligence agent, the first phase of a recruitment operation was to identify the target. This meant collecting as much information as possible about the target’s past and current situation, as well as aspirations for the future. Every investigation starts with understanding the nature and character of the NOW phase.

Here is a list of typical questions used in FBI recruitment operations to help agents get clarity about the issues and specific needs of the person we’re investigating. These same questions may also help you define the phase of life you are now living in. It is impossible to attain personal empowerment without understanding the nature and character of your current phase of life:

  1. When did this current phase begin? Identify the boundary that separates this phase from previous phases. The boundary may be a transition (a new job, relationship, or a new city), an event (marriage, divorce, death, children), a discovery, or a decision (a different career or going back to school).
  2. Who are the key people in your life during this period? What role does each play? Which relationships are satisfying? Disappointing? Why?
  3. What events characterize this phase? They may be personal or professional events.
  4. What are the major opportunities and responsibilities that characterize this phase? How do you spend your time? What interests you most? Least? What is most creative about your life during this phase? Most demanding?
  5. What characterizes your inner state during this phase? How would you describe your spirituality? Reflections? Feelings? Do you journal?
  6. What is your physical state during this phase? Are you healthy? What are your health challenges?

To attain personal empowerment, it’s important to understand the key issues in your life and decisions you are being asked to make during this phase.

What kinds of thoughts, impressions, experiences, etc. came to you during this exercise? What are some key insights in this phase of your life? How do these empower you?

—-
Author’s Bio:

Larae Quy

LaRae Quy was an FBI agent, both a counterintelligence and undercover agent, for 25 years. She exposed foreign spies and recruited them to work for the U.S. Government. Now she explores the unknown and discovers the hidden truth via her blog Your Best Adventure. You can find her on Twitter as @LaRaeQuy

Thanks, Larae!

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Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Be Still

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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“Still, still, still…one can hear the falling snow…” That’s the opening of my favorite Christmas carol.

It speaks to something buried deep inside us that craves absolute quiet and solitude. Picture a midnight snowfall, before the footprints. Picture being alone on the beach in the early morning. It doesn’t matter what your spiritual beliefs are, or your religious tradition, we all need to withdraw occasionally from the heat of battle and restore ourselves.

How does this relate to our online selves?

Here are some ideas:

  • White space on the website
  • Pause between questions in the conversation
  • Room to breathe
  • Remove one popup window
  • Say no to animated gifs
  • Clear every single thing off your desk
  • Offer a single button
  • Don’t pitch in every communication
  • Stop keyword stuffing
  • Think for a moment before typing a response
  • Don’t hold yourself to a 5 minute turnaround on all emails
  • Turn off the social alerts for part of the day
  • Cut back on the multitasking

And now that you’ve read this, sit up straight in your chair, close your eyes, and breathe in and out slowly five times. Be still for a moment.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee

First things first; 5 tips for online relationship building

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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365 Days of Gratitude

Building a lasting online relationship is a lot like building a fire. You must lay down kindling, and shavings, and a little teepee of sticks, and patiently fan the little spark into flames. Then eventually, you can add the big logs, set them aflame, and warm yourself. If you need a fire that will last a long time, you’ll want glowing coals that will produce serious heat. Building that type of fire takes time.

Following this line of thought, do you think it’s a good method to pile up a bunch of briquets, douse them with lighter fluid, and blow your eyebrows off?

That’s the mistake a lot of well-intentioned people make when they enter the social media world. They try to force a relationship out of nothing, from the merest contact, and then they’re disappointed when it explodes in their face or doesn’t ever catch fire.

Here are five tips that will save your eyebrows:

1. Don’t keep asking for the “like.” If they like you, they will “like” you when they’re ready.

2. If someone follows you back on Twitter, don’t go hunt them down on 50 other social networks and follow them immediately. Establish some rapport on the first network, then you can branch out by mutual consent.

3. Stop the auto-reply that demands something from your new visitor (read my blog, visit my Facebook page, buy my new e-book). Instead, give a human welcome.

4. Always read a blog or forum for a week or two before you plunge into commenting; it will give you a sense of the tone and style of the community.

5. Just as in face-to-face relationship building, be interested in order to be interesting. Ask questions, listen, and then focus your replies on the person you’re talking with. Drop the agenda and make a true connection.

If you take the long term approach, your sparks of connection will light up the world.
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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Twitter as @rhogroupee