Transforming dull, unproductive meetings into dynamic, impactful gatherings is easier than you think. In her book “6 Tips for Better Meetings: Any questions? Good.,” Alyson Krueger shares practical strategies to elevate your meeting game and drive meaningful results.
Discover how these six simple tips can revolutionize your approach to meetings and unlock the true potential of your team. Keep reading to learn more!
Table of Contents
- Genres
- Review
- Recommendation
- Take-Aways
- Summary
- Corporate leaders are finally recognizing that bad meetings needn’t be a sunk cost of doing business.
- To improve your business meetings, replace the agenda with work-related questions, put an executive in charge of meetings, keep sessions brief, allow all attendees to participate, and solicit feedback.
- About the Author
Genres
Business, Self-Help, Leadership, Communication, Productivity, Management, Professional Development, Workplace Culture, Time Management, Organizational Behavior
Alyson Krueger’s book “6 Tips for Better Meetings: Any questions? Good.” is a concise guide to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of meetings in professional settings. The author presents six practical strategies that can be easily implemented to transform meetings from time-wasting endeavors into productive, engaging discussions.
These tips include setting clear agendas, assigning roles, encouraging participation, maintaining focus, managing time effectively, and following up on action items. Krueger emphasizes the importance of preparation, active listening, and creating an inclusive environment where all participants feel valued and heard. By adopting these strategies, teams can enhance collaboration, streamline decision-making processes, and ultimately achieve better outcomes.
Review
“6 Tips for Better Meetings: Any questions? Good.” is a must-read for anyone looking to optimize their meeting culture and boost productivity. Alyson Krueger’s straightforward, actionable advice is grounded in real-world experience and can be immediately applied to any professional setting.
The book’s clear, concise format makes it easy to digest and reference as needed. Krueger’s engaging writing style and relatable anecdotes bring the tips to life, making the reader feel empowered to implement change within their own organization. While some of the strategies may seem intuitive, the author’s insights and examples provide fresh perspectives on common meeting challenges.
Whether you’re a seasoned executive or a team member looking to make a difference, this book offers valuable guidance for transforming meetings into powerful tools for collaboration and success.
Recommendation
Jason Fried, the CEO of software firm Basecamp, once likened meetings to salt, which ought to be “sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful.” Indeed, too much salt ruins a meal, just as too many meetings extinguish team morale. In this brief yet pithy New York Times article, lifestyle writer Alyson Krueger, citing Steven G.Rogelberg’s The Surprising Science of Meetings, presents six ingredients that will enrich your meetings, allowing juicy ideas to bubble to the surface and marinade, while optimizing conditions to produce exquisite work.
Take-Aways
- Corporate leaders are finally recognizing that bad meetings needn’t be a sunk cost of doing business.
- To improve your business meetings, replace the agenda with work-related questions, put an executive in charge of meetings, keep sessions brief, allow all attendees to participate, and solicit feedback.
Summary
Corporate leaders are finally recognizing that bad meetings needn’t be a sunk cost of doing business.
Meetings are often unnecessary soul-destroying wastes of time. For much of the industrial era, corporate leaders considered bad meetings to be a regrettable but unavoidable by-product of doing business, and they made little effort to solve the problem.
“Sometimes the best meeting is no meeting at all.”
Nowadays, business leaders are finally recognizing that meetings can be tighter, more productive and more conducive to generating ideas and making decisions.
Steven G. Rogelberg — a professor of organizational science, management, and psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of The Surprising Science of Meetings — identified six ways to refine and improve meetings:
- Replace the agenda with questions that need addressing — You’ll know if a meeting was successful if, upon its completion, you have an answer to your question.
- Ensure the purpose of the meeting pertains to work — Productive meetings often feel like social engagements because, when meetings go well, participants feel a greater affinity toward one another. However, all meetings should have a work-related goal at their core.
- Place an executive in charge of meetings — Although meetings are expensive activities for companies — in terms of the time, money, and energy they consume — businesses rarely have an executive to oversee them. Delegate the job of improving meetings to an executive, who must work with teams to set some basic meeting etiquette and to improve the structure of meetings.
- Schedule short meetings — Studies show that participants remain focused and achieve more if meetings have a short allotted time slot.
- Share the limelight — According to a survey of employees, the least effective meetings are those where a leader does most of the talking. Meetings ought to give all participants a voice, so encourage all attendees to share their thoughts and ideas.
- Solicit feedback — Few organizations proactively seek to improve meetings. Corporate engagement surveys rarely ask employees about meetings, and problems fester as a result. Solicit feedback to find a way out of meeting hell.
About the Author
Lifestyle writer Alyson Krueger is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fast Company, and more.