Effective Meetings and Decisions – not just for Intranet Teams

Published January 9, 2009 by Stephan Schillerwein

I stumbled across a little (hand-written) list of hints for effective meetings and decisions that I wrote down years ago when I was working as an Internet Strategy Director at Intel.
Here goes:

Meetings

• have a clear purpose why you hold a meeting (esp. regular meetings lack this noticeably…)
• have an (agreed upon) agenda
• ensure thar every participant understands his role in the meeting and comes well prepared (sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it…)
• have a clear understanding of how and to whom the results of the meeting will be communicated

I’d add “accurately stick to the timings”…
Decision Making

• define what decisions have to be made (in a meeting, a project phase, etc.)
• define when they have to be made
• define who will (and can) make the decision
• analyse who should be consulted (or notifyed) before deciding
• have a clear understanding who will/can ratify or veto the decision
• define who will need to be informed about the decision

From today’s perspective I would add “analyse who will have to support the implementation of the decision and thus should be involved as a stakeholder” to the list.
Anything else you’d think is relevant?