Business Meetings

Preparation

First of all we should think about what is a meeting and what kind of meeting we would like to have. For an efficient and productive meeting we have to be sure that there are contents and discussions that deserve to be faced in the meeting. Meetings are time-consumption. This mean that time used for meeting is time subtracted to work. It is useless and unproductive to organize meetings without anything to talk about. Every meeting has a cost in time terms. It is usefull to think and organize the points to discuss during the meeting before its beginning. A very good strategy for organize a good meeting is to fix the meeting goals before and plan the discussion that will happen during the meeting. A guideline of the main points should be drawn up. In this way the time consumption will be optimized. The goals of the meeting should be clear to all the participants before the meeting take place, in this way all the participants will have the time to get ready to face up and discuss the topics. It is necessary to be sure that all the participants will be present at the meeting on time. Planning the day is very important for workers, so it is very useful to schedule the begin and the end of the meeting. It is crucial to invite only the necessary people at the meeting. People who can’t carry any improvement to the project should be not invited to the meeting. The less participants attending a meeting, the more they will feel involved in the meeting.

Process

Meeting are the perfect place in which the participants of a project can coordinate their activity. During meeting all the project members will update others about their intake and the progress of their work. Meetings are for companies and enterprises the moment in which all the members of a team, or the participants of a project meet up all together and share their ideas about how to improve what they are doing. Sharing ideas, giving feedbacks and listen to other people's opinion help the participants of a project to improve their work. Listening a feedback from others is always a good confirmation about our job or an alarm bell if we are following the wrong path. Meetings should be the opportunity to plan and schedule business process. Every activity and task can be discussed during the meetings in a cross-departmental context. Goals and achievements can be determined and planned. Only after that all the participants of the meeting agree on those points they can start to work on the task of their competence in a coordinated and more efficient way. It is important that all the departments and functions work synchronized in order to achieve goals in a harmonic way

Follow-up

It is useful to note the points and the topics faced during a meeting by the participants and the outcomes for every point that has been discussed. A track of the meeting, in which are highlighted the objectives that have been defined during the meeting should be filed. Meetings are useless if project members will not do what they planned during the meeting. It is crucially important to monitor the members activity and the company/enterprise trend according to time-scheduled goals which are shared between all the departments.