单选题
"If you had to identify, in one word, the reason the human
race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word
would be meetings." Thus spoke humorist Dave Barry, and many of us would agree.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Some tips for having a good one:
Start and end strongly. Running a productive meeting isn't rocket
science. As Denver-based consultant Teri Schwartz notes, much of it boils down
to opening and conducting every meeting with a purpose and closing it with a
plan for "going forward." Problems arise when people forget this. "It's like
flying a plane," says Schwartz. "Most crashes happen at takeoff and
landing." Pick a leader. Four years ago, Cleveland's KeyCorp
Bank adopted a new principle: Always assign someone to lead. "The worst thing
you can do is go into a meeting with no one in charge," says the bank's senior
EVP and chief risk officer, Charles Hyle. "It turns into a shouting
match." Think small. Be realistic about what you can
accomplish. "You can't solve world hunger in an hour," Schwartz says. By the
same token, keep the number of attendees manageable to stimulate discussion.
"When you have too many people in the room," says Hyle, "everyone clams up as if
their mouths were sealed." Direct, don't dominate. "People hate
it when they can't get their work done because they have to go to somebody
else's meeting," says Columbia Business School professor Michael Feiner. So
encourage others to speak up and get involved, especially junior staffers. "They
need to believe it's not his meeting or her meeting, but 'our' meeting," Feiner
says. Lay down the rules of engagement. Everyone should
understand who will take notes and how decisions will be made. Remember that
consensus is typically a bad thing. "It means there isn't enough dialogue or
debate," says Feiner, "and that's the lifeblood of any innovative organization."
Jon Petz, the author of Boring Meetings Suck, suggests assigning follow-up tasks
during the final five to ten minutes, then repeating them later in a group
e-mail so that there's no confusion.