This is my first 4 in a series of how to have fun, effective, productive meetings.

1. 1.Introduction
   

2. 2.How to have Effective meetings
   

3. 3.How to make meetings fun
   

4. 4.Additional Tips
   

1. Introduction

One of the things I like to say about my actual job is how fun are the team meetings that we have.

No, I don’t work in Pixar, Six Flags nor NBC. I work for an IT compnay focused on the health care industry.

No, I don’t work in Marketing, publicity, or employee events coordination.

I work as a consultant for the configuration of specific software at clients site. These clients are insurance companies.

So, imagine a meeting at my work: A team of IT consultants speaking health care insurance lexic.

You yawn. Let me assure you is quite the contrary.

The most of the meetings I have during the day (and this moment are at least 2 daily meetings), you can hear laughs pretty consistently. Besides, all of these meetings are quite productive and with active participation of everyone involved.

How is this possible? Well, this is what I want to share in this series of posts.

I’ll talk about some tips on how to make an effective meeting. How to avoid “meetingus extremus” and at the same time, not to let that a meetingophobia prevents you from having business reunions that could be quite productive.

Besides, I want to say that this is not only for in-person meetings. It could be phone or virtual meetings. Actually, probably during the last 10 years, over 75% of the meetings I’ve been in have included at least one remote person.

Challenges:

1. -In a common office environment, a person will have 11 hours of meetings per week.
   

2. -It is estimated that 50% of the time invested in meetings is time lost.
   

3. -There are over 55 million meetings per week in USA.
   

4. -An unproductive meeting normally will require an additional meeting.
   

5. -And normally in a meeting you can’t do the work you are expected to do.
   

6. -There isn’t a College class that focuses on effective meetings.
   

7. -We learn from our bosses to have meetings. Unfortunately, if we have a boss that has ineffective meetings, that’s what we will learn.
   

1. -However, meetings are necessaries, and can be very useful and critical on helping us to reach our goals.
   

So, step by step, how can we transform that boring Monday meeting (or the daily 9 o’clock meeting) in a productive, effective, fun, meeting?

Suggested links while I write the next posts.

The meeting guru at EffectiveMeetings.com

http://www.effectivemeetings.com/guru/solution_index.asp

Good meetings with great ideas at Dumb Little Man

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2010/03/good-meeting-with-great-ideas-now-what.html

How to run an effective meeting at BNET

http://www.bnet.com/2403-13059_23-61211.html