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The Advisor’s Corner – How Do I Deal with a Calendar Full of Meetings?

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How Do I Deal with a Calendar Full of Meetings?Question:

How do I deal with a calendar full of meetings that are wasting my time?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

I love meetings… when and only when they produce something useful. When they don’t, I stop going. Seriously, I gave up useless meetings just like I gave up greasy food, cold turkey, so to speak!

Dave Barry once said, “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.” Well, lousy meetings anyway.

Indeed, there are great meetings and important ones I’d never want to miss. People need to congregate and exchanges things. We need to network, learn, collaborate, decide, discuss, chew on ideas, mind-meld, team-build, brainstorm and have fun together. There are plenty of fabulous reasons why people should have meetings, gatherings, and get togethers.

Yet, we have a serious meeting epidemic in this country. This is not my opinion; it’s a fact. Smart people study this stuff, and the reality is, we have been meeting for more hours each and every year since they started keeping track back in the 1950’s. It’s a bit like global warming – it creeps up on you and before you know it, your life is one big meeting desert or tsunami or both, at the same time, in the same meeting!

Email didn’t fix it. Whiz-bang meeting software didn’t fix it. Today, you can just throw on a t-shirt, sit at your computer, and be in a meeting with virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. Yes, it’s a short commute, and convenient, but now instead of commuting, you are simply in another meeting. How’s that working for you?

There is a whole planet full of people suffering from bad meetings. You’d think it was contagious. Well, you’d be right. The way meetings are run in your organization IS a result of your internal culture, meeting protocols, and the meeting skills of the person running them. Every new person coming into the system generally conforms to those norms. So… ask yourself, “How healthy and productive is the meeting virus I am passing around?”

For those meetings you attend but don’t run, remember, it’s YOUR calendar. So take control of it. The next time you are about to agree to a meeting, try asking yourself these 5 questions:

  1. WHY are we having this meeting; what is the goal; what are the deliverables?
  2. WHOSE meeting is it?
  3. WHAT kind of a meeting do we need to have? In person, on the phone, virtual, standing up, off-site, formal, informal, etcetera.
  4. WHO should be there? Why?
  5. WHAT are our meeting ‘norms,’ and do I like them? If not, why am I going to this meeting and/or what am I going to do about it?

Once you decide, yes, you need a meeting, you need a purpose and an agenda. Every item on your agenda should have one of three purposes or a combination of them or it shouldn’t be there at all.

Information – Discussion -­ Decision

Information: no more than 20% of any meeting should be spent on information sharing – there are plenty of other and cheaper ways to share information other than meeting time.

Discussion: means getting input and ideas, hearing from the people in the group. Make sure you have a method to do that well.

Decision-making: use best practices and ask all the important questions when a decision needs to be made

Take control of your life and work by taking control of the time you spend in meetings that don’t matter, and making the time you do spend in meetings an investment that DOES matter.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – Does working smarter, not harder apply to leadership positions?

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Does working smarter, not harder apply to leadership positions?Question:

Can “working smarter, not harder” really be applied to leadership positions?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Of course! Leaders already work hard if they are successful with their teams and organizations. The heart of the question is not: “how hard to squeeze the orange,” but rather, “how, with less effort and time, one can get as much healthy juice from the same orange – and perhaps even have time left to plant a new tree.”

Time: Your use of time is first on the list because it is a significant choice point. You make many choices about how you spend yours and others’ time. Once you lose your time or theirs, you will never get it back. So pay close attention to choices around time, and make good ones.

We waste a LOT of time in lousy meetings. Make sure you are running effective meetings that actually matter. Have a goal, ensure that 20 percent or less is devoted to information sharing, have a good agenda, get the right people in the room, and plan to have the meeting facilitated well. Get people engaged and working on meaningful things. You know you’ve done well when people ask when they can get together again like this!

Conflicts: Deal quickly and well with issues that arise because unresolved conflicts drain huge quantities of energy out of the system and from you and your team. When people ‘workaround’ each other, they travel a much greater distance and these problems don’t go away, they grow tentacles and spread everywhere.

Build Your Team: Build a strong team and support them in doing what they do best. It is FAR smarter, cheaper, faster to take time upfront to build strength and skills within your teams – where people feel safe to contribute, know their roles and expectations, trust each other to do their jobs well, and utilize the power of group synergy to create a result greater than the sum of their parts. This is often misnamed the “touchy-feely” work. Wrong! The leader who ignores this reality, ignores it at their own peril. The fact is, and always has been – jumping to task is just not smart. It takes much more time to clean up the messes that arise, and there is far less engagement from the people meant to do the task.

Delegate Well: You can’t do it all yourself, so don’t even try. Get smarter about how and who should be doing what, when. Delegation is about developing your people through giving them NEW work that grows them and liberates you at the same time. You can then apply your time and skill sets more effectively.

Work-Life Integration: Some leaders believe working hard equals putting in long hours and making the job the biggest priority in their lives. Usually one or more of these situations/needs are in play:

  • They don’t want to go home for any number of reasons.
  • They think/assume/know the culture and the boss expects them to be a workaholic and/or think they will impress someone(s) by doing so and that impression will lead to some kind of reward.
  • They waste a good amount of time during normal working hours and have to get the work done after hours.

A truly effective leader knows how to get the job done in a reasonable amount of time AND keep her/his personal life and overall health well integrated. Of course there are special situations we all need to double-down for, but reasonable is the norm.

Founders are an exception. They often live in, through, and with their business; there is little distinction between who they are and what they do at play, work, or home. Life, for them, is ALL about their business and they chose that life consciously.

The rest of us need to take a much closer look at how we can get more good juice out of the same orange, by being smarter, by thinking in new ways, and without killing ourselves or our people.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Salespeople have questions, Jeffrey has answers.

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I get a ton of emails from people seeking insight or asking me to solve sales dilemmas. Here are a few that may relate to your job, your life and, most important, your sales thought process right now:

Jeffrey, I’m interested in your insight and guidance. I think selling is the best job in the world, but there’s one aspect I’m struggle with. It’s the feeling of being out of control, and being the master of my own destiny. I tend to work on more complex deals that have large decision making groups, and therefore can be quite a long cycle. I used to sell smaller deals where I could track progress more meaningfully, but now I find myself doing 1 x $1M deals rather than 10 x $100k deals where the risk was spread. Any tips on how to stay sane while waiting for big decisions? How do I regain and maintain a feeling that I’m in control of my results? Best regards, Paul

Paul, Managing your time is not the answer. Prioritizing your accounts in the order that they are likely to close is a better way to view the process. But there are several elements involved, and several decisions you have to make:

1. Why would you give up your bread and butter and just shoot for the moon?
Instead, allocate half your time to sure money and half your time to the big prize. This will leave you in control of your short-term destiny, and allow you to mark a clearer path toward the bigger deal.

2. All committees have a daddy. The person that leads the committee, or even the person that he or she reports to, are the two people that you should be establishing relationships with because they control the outcome. If you simply go in and make a presentation to a committee, they’ll be forever lost in the shuffle of indecision, proposals, and fighting price with competitors (three of the worst, if not dumbest, elements in making a large sale).

3. Direct contact is not an option. Stop emailing people and waiting for replies. Phone numbers, cell phone numbers, early morning coffee, late afternoon casual conversations, gathering personal data, and sending important business information will help establish you as a resource, rather than being looked at as a vendor.

3.5 Your level of frustration is only a symptom. Your problem is you haven’t identified the real decision maker, how the decision will be made, and what the real motive is to purchase. Until you know those three things, your frustration will most likely fall into poverty. Not good. Best regards, Jeffrey

Jeffrey, My name is John and I am a house call veterinarian in Syracuse, NY. I have read several of your books and I love your iPhone app! I am having some difficulty growing my business and I KNOW you are the perfect person to help me!

I have been in business for just over four years. Things are steady and stable, but we are not growing the way I know we could and should be. In fact, SOMEHOW, it seems that regardless of our marketing efforts, referrals, etc. we ALWAYS come out JUST AHEAD of being behind in the financial department. It drives me crazy as everybody we meet tells us how great we are and what an unusual and helpful service we provide, yet we are STILL booking no more than one week ahead at a time. I have tried practically EVERY type of advertising (newspaper, TV, radio, billboards, handouts/fliers) with no great outcome. We are a luxury service (and prefer it that way). We have run out of great ideas to try that won’t cost a ton of money. Please help! John

John, Before you let your business go to the dogs, you might want to try less advertising and more promotion.

Begin with your Facebook business page. Post stories and videos of your existing customers and their experiences with you. Tag the customer and tag the photo. Your customer will begin to send that story to all of their friends. Also start a YouTube channel. Make sure all the videos are posted there as well – with all the appropriate tags. Without taking advantage of business social media, especially Facebook, your doomed to waiting for response.

The second thing you have to do is contact every existing customer and talk to them about why they use you. Capture all of those reasons and begin to use them in all of your messaging and promotions.

Third, start a weekly email magazine that features one of your customers every week.
Fourth, subscribe to Ace of Sales. Every time you have a customer, take a photo of their pet and using the Ace of Sales email program, include a photo of their pet along when you send them a thank you note for their business.

With all the promotion that you do, you will begin to have positive word-of-mouth messages and positive internet messages sent out about you and ultimately sent back to you. Advertising alone will not get you the response that you need in today’s world. You have to dedicate the time and the resources to social media promotion and other forms of proactive outreach. You have all the assets you need to succeed in your business, you just haven’t utilized them in the proper way. Best regards, Jeffrey

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Advisor’s Corner – If I Don’t Measure, Can I Manage?

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Question:

There are several axioms regarding measurement such as:

  • What gets measured gets done.
  • What gets measured and rewarded gets done well.
  • If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
  • What gets measured gets managed.

Is it really true that if something is not measured it is not being managed? Not everything can be measured simply because of resource constraints and I would hesitate to assert that these areas subsequently suffer from management neglect. What are your thoughts?

StrategyDriven Response:

The short answer is no. Not measuring something does not necessarily equate to its not being managed. An organization’s limited resources dictate that only a finite number of activities can be directly measured; just as a manager’s limited available time prevents all activities from being directly monitored. But while these cliches do not represent an absolute truth, managers do need to recognize current realities in terms of defined future goals in order to possess the knowledge necessary to formulate their organization’s activities. Performance measures represent one very effective means of acquiring this knowledge on a routine basis with relatively minimal cost.

Therefore, a key manager responsibility is to identify those few performance measures that will best enable him or her to guide their organization in the achievement of the company’s mission goals in the most efficient manner possible. These measures must necessarily monitor the conduct of ongoing production work and support identification and implementation of improvement opportunities. Because an organization’s circumstances and the market environment change over time, the adopted performance measures will likely be changed and/or replaced over time.

Final Thought…

Since having no performance measures is not an option, the real challenge becomes determining what to measure in order to effectively manages while at the same time remaining within the organization’s constrained resource budget. Several StrategyDriven articles, podcasts, and whitepapers are dedicated to the topic of identifying the right performance measures including:

Articles

Podcasts

Whitepapers

Lastly, it is important to recognize that the reverse is not necessarily true either; having performance measures does not necessarily result in a process or activity being managed or managed well. Performance measures are simply a management tool without which effective management is difficult.

The Advisor’s Corner Introduction

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The Advisor’s Corner expands on the strategic planning and tactical business execution dialogue between StrategyDriven contributors and our websites visitors. Postings in this category reflect questions asked by StrategyDriven members and guests and the advice provided by one or more of our highly experienced business professionals. Additionally, StrategyDriven members are provided the opportunity to share their insights and experiences by way of comments and feedback to the individual postings.

All visitors to the StrategyDriven website are encouraged to submit their questions to The Advisor’s Corner by email at [email protected] or by using the ‘Email The Advisor’s Corner’ link located on the right sidebar on the StrategyDriven website. If desired, questions may be submitted anonymously to maintain confidentiality.