Are we going to do the work or just meet about it?

Meeting morass:
Time to adjourn

With Ann Humphries, ETICON

(CNN) -- No one remembers why it was called the first time. The morning meeting. Each day for years, it's been a fixture at the office, though. So each day, everybody troops in, sits down, hunkers around the table and longs for the meeting to be over.

The odd thing about such meetings is how firmly they take on lives of their own. Management tends to like meetings because they're the forum in which most managers' work is done. Ironically, they can be highly counter-productive for other staff members -- as long as you're stuck in a meeting, the work you're talking about doing isn't getting done.

QUICK VOTE Which one of the following things would most improve meetings where you work? Have fewer meetings. Have more meetings. Have meeting agendas. Stop and start meetings on time. Don't let one staffer dominate meetings. Lighten the mood of meetings. Be more serious in meetings. View Results

MESSAGE BOARD How do meetings go where you work? Talk to us about the good ones, the bad ones and everything in between.

CNN: In trying to sort out how best to ensure that meetings are useful and not wasteful, we asked ETICON's Ann Humphries to call the confusion to order.

Ann Humphries: Wouldn't it be nice to have a "get out of meeting free" pass? The easiest way to make meetings a little less unpleasant is to end early. Everyone will love you for it.

But you need to look at the problem from a wider standpoint than that, of course. The big thing is to match the purpose of the meeting to the length of the meeting, the place and the time.

I was once working with a county agency that was having brainstorming sessions -- at 3 p.m. on Thursday afternoons. You can't do that kind of work at that time.

Along the same lines, it's good not to schedule meetings during prime time at work. There's something great about leaving people's time open when they need it -- time to handle their deadlines and get things done. So when scheduling a meeting, be sure to ask yourself who do you need to be most available to? -- maybe customers, maybe vendors. And for whose convenience is the meeting being scheduled? For whose productivity>?

Now, the logic that so many managers miss has to do with where the staffers do the most for the company. That's usually at their posts, not in a meeting. But the problems I hear in seminars and from executives is either too many meetings or too few.

Hold too many meetings and the staff doesn't get enough done, doesn't feel its time is respected and resents the people calling the meetings. Hold too few and you get dissent and fragmentation. Sometimes I go into a company and ask when their last was, they tell me six months ago -- that's your problem right there.

And there are plenty of things you can do to make meetings more palatable.

•   Make sure the room has good air circulation.

•   Make an agenda. Make it well, not just something thrown together. If possible, circulated it before the meeting, let people add some topics. Then stick to that agenda.

•   Open with a quick, friendly greeting, don't just jump into business. Introduce anyone new. Transition into the meeting.

•   State the times a meeting will start and stop. And stick to those times.

•   Don't read to your colleagues from a piece of paper. Just hit the high points of what everybody needs to know.

•   Make the meeting fast-paced and content-driven but also respectful and friendly.

•   Be on time. A meeting must always start within seven minutes of its posted time. If you're the leader, be sure you're on time.

•   Have any audio-visual equipment already set up and tested before the meeting. Overhead projectors, PowerPoint presentations -- you name it. People need to get over winging it, even for routine meetings and their equipment.

LET'S NOT TAKE A MEETING
	Instead of calling a meeting, let's just be in touch by e-mail. So much more efficient. We'd like to know what's on your mind in terms of career etiquette. Click here for our submission form. And thanks.

•   Control side conversations. It's one thing to say, "Please pass that pencil," but sometimes you have so many extended conversations going on that people are like the Muppets in the background.

Sometimes, you actually hear a comment along the lines of, "You know, it's a pleasure to go to her meetings." High praise. It usually means the meeting leader in question is highly organized, friendly, brisk, efficient and good at making the value and purpose of a meeting clear to everyone and quick to accomplish.

When you hear about someone that good at meetings, it makes you ... want to meet her.

Ann Humphries and ETICON have a special health care seminar planned, "Through the Patients' Eyes: Creating a Culture of Service for Health Care Providers." it's set for March 28 in Columbia, South Carolina, and sponsored by Palmetto Health Alliance/Physician Services in Palmetto Baptist Auditorium. Two sessions will be offered, one from 8:30 a.m. to noon and the second from 1 p.m. to 4:30. Tuition is $59 per person. Topics to be covered: what rudeness costs health care; how to manage all the impressions you make; "a way with words;" and "one moment, please" telephone skills. for registration information, call Linda Silver at 803-296-5769.

Ann Humphries, founder and president of ETICON, Inc. and a Certified Professional Consultant to Management, includes several Fortune 500 companies among her clients. She's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Money, and on CNN, CBS and Lifetime TV. You can contact her at www.eticon.com.

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ETICON

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