Boring Meetings Suck: Get More Out of Your Meetings, or Get Out of More Meetings

Your Follow-Up Sucks

My message here can be stated quickly: Be accountable for your stated actions and do what you say you are going to do.

Wouldn't it be a perfect world if this happened every time? Hold on … let me just sit in peace and dream about that for a moment. Aah … can you feel the excuses, lack of organization, missed priorities, deadlines, and responsibilities gently floating away?

No? Me neither!

Perhaps it's written somewhere that it's against the rules to live in a utopian world of people doing what they promise every time, on time.

Considering that basic meeting preparation is frequently an after thought, what are the chances of departing attendees actually taking action on all the items discussed? It can happen, don't get me wrong. But it sure can be difficult if you don't build an environment that's conducive to holding people accountable.

The solution? Implement a simple process that enables you to:

• Document the meeting decisions, action items, or responsibilities.
• Assign people, teams, or resources to those items.
• Set deadlines or milestones for their completion.
• Have all this information readily available to those who need it.
• Identify a method to confirm items that have been completed.

That's it. A few simple steps to help people stop “talking the talk” and start “walking the walk” instead of leaving empty promises on the conference room table.

While you can't babysit people to get things done, the following SRDs may help facilitate the process.

Facilitator ...