Why is A Scheduled Meeting Necessary?

It's 9.00am on an usual Monday morning. Reach the office, turn on the computer, get a cuppa and download the necessary files with important numbers prepared before work was let off either, last Friday or Sunday (depends on how committed and effective we are) and we head on straight to the meeting room.

Now some of you may find the activity above just like your usual auto-mode when reaching the office on Monday.

Now why are there weekly meetings and other sequential meetings every now and then within our colleagues and other stakeholders? It keeps important communications going around the organisation. A healthy organisation ensures that the staff be open and always talking to each other regardless of departments, levels and geographical locations.

The ability to communicate is the most important skill you can develop in your personal-being. Some people leverage on the idea of effective communication to get on to the fast track in their career. It is a point used to solve problems and make decisions, both by ourselves and with other people. A meeting will be deemed useless if we sit together and just chat about the cats and the dogs, which some organisations often do, unless you are in the cats and dogs' business.

There is a systematic approach to achieving effective problem solving and decision making in discussions. It begins with defining the challenges and needs, "where's next?" and get "locked and loaded" with ammunition of solutions.

Firstly of course, is addressing to challenges and needs by defining them in written forms. Often receive response from leaders in an organisation with this common remark, "I know these stuff. It's in my head." Many entrepreneurs have failed to get them across the heads of their subordinates and teammates. This step is so important that every team member has to get the details from the question, "What exactly is the problem?" clearly. As some experts put it, clarity of definition will resolve 50% of the issues before they go any further.

Next is to throw the questions of "Where's next?" or "Where do we go from here?" or even "What do we do from here?", not forgetting "What are our options for the future?" An important note here to remember is that be sure to focus on the future over the past. In most cases, the meetings do not seem to go anywhere as too many problem-solving discussions end up focusing all of the attention of all the people present on what happened in the past and who is to be blamed. To have control is to take responsibility of the outcome that had happened, draw quickly the lessons from the past and move on quickly to what's next.

When a gun run out of ammunitions, we don't go complaining about it to other people around and start whining on how ineffective the gun is, when it can't accommodate more bullets per round. Imagine the enemy is fast approaching. You just grab the next round of ammunition and continue the shots! Same goes in effective problem solving communications. It is for everyone in a team to talk about the solutions instead of talking about the problems. It is for everyone to keep the attention in the meeting to focus on the possible solutions and what can be done rather than what has already happened.

Here's what you can practice immediately. First, take some time to be absolutely clear about the problem that is under discussion. Give some thought to what an ideal decision or solution would accomplish. Instead of focusing on the situation as it is, talk about the situation as you would like it to be.

Second, keep the conversation focused on solutions, on what can be done in the future. The more you think and talk about solutions, the more positive and creative everyone will be and the better ideas you will come up with.