"They are, more often than not, an utter waste of time. They're usually boring beyond endurance. They can drag on forever. Nothing ever seems to get accomplished, decided, or solved. No one, including you, really wants to attend them. And the next one is scheduled for 10 a.m. tomorrow..." "If this describes your company's meetings as accurately as it describes most business meetings, help is at hand! Here's the ultimate guide to ending the time and productivity drain of inefficient meetings and replacing them with well-planned, dynamic, and productive ones that include today's newest and most exciting multimedia presentations." "Written by 3M's winning team of meeting management experts - considered the best in the business at helping companies prioritize and streamline business meetings - Mastering Meetings will save you time, expense, and redundancy by providing answers to such questions as: Is this meeting really necessary? Who should attend? When and where should the meeting be held? How long should the meeting be? What is the best room arrangement? How can you most effectively present your ideas to the group?" "Full coverage also is given to the latest techniques and equipment for creating dynamic multimedia presentations, as well as inexpensive, high-impact visuals - charts, tables, graphs, and more - using PCs, plain paper copiers, and infrared transparencies. You'll learn what makes a good visual and how to use visuals to get messages across lucidly and emphatically." "In addition, you'll learn how to change the meeting room from a battle arena to a workshop; develop participation skills in all your employees; conduct multilingual meetings; develop and deliver powerful presentations; understand meeting dynamics, and make them work for you rather than against you; and much more!"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Every business has them--but some are more effective than others. Meetings can take up to 75% of executive time, and are usually much less productive that they should be. Now the world's largest private management organization presents the ultimate time-saving, goal-oriented guide for having productive meetings.

Don’t let another unproductive meeting waste your time. Mastering Meetings that Matter is the game changing resource you need to transform your meetings from mediocre to exceptional. This guide is designed for leaders and facilitators who want to increase the relevance, impact and significance of their meetings.

"Mastering Council Meetings guides councils toward smooth, efficient, and fair meetings using effective leadership principles and practices grounded in Robert's Rules of Order."--Back cover.

"That was an awful meeting. What a waste of my time!" How often have you had this same thought? Why do we tolerate bad meetings? Consider the last meeting you attended. How many of these pitfalls were evident? - Did not start on time. - Missing key people. - Lacked a clear purpose. - No agenda. - Few people engaged. - One or two people dominated. - Discussion wandered, repeatedly. - Key issues were not addressed. - No decisions made. - No follow-up actions. - The meeting was not worth the time. Have we lowered the bar so far that bad meetings have become the norm? Enough is enough. It is time to ignite a meetings revolution. How Do You Transform a Bad Meeting Culture? In The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, Michael Wilkinson provides leaders with a step-by-step guide for igniting a meetings revolution. The result: a complete culture transformation in which bad meetings become unacceptable! This book supplies a step-by-step guide for igniting and sustaining a meetings revolution which, if successful, will permanently change the way meetings are run in an organization. In his book, Wilkinson recommends that executives empower their people with a set of meeting rights. He then provides a comprehensive meetings transformation program that equips meeting leaders and meeting participants with tools for masterful meetings. What this Book Contains - 10 Meeting Rights to empower every participant. - 10 steps to transform your meeting culture. - 15 meeting problems and how to address them. - 4 strategies for eliminating unneeded meetings. - 6 tips for getting meetings started on time. - 3 robust tools for resolving disagreements. - 4 techniques for rescuing poorly run meetings. - 14 strategies for maximizing virtual meetings. - 6 agendas to use to gain the results you want. - 4 checklists for executing Masterful Meetings. - And much more. Give Yourself a Gift. Give a copy of this book to everyone whose meetings you attend: a gift that truly keeps on giving!

The benefits include: cost reduction; increased productivity; improved safety; higher morale; and the ability to meet the changing expectations of your customers.Step-by-step, the authors guide you through the creation and implementation of a process master. You will learn:Identify and gain control of your organization's key processes.Get the right people involved.Establish boundaries and measures.Use the process master to support ISO and HACCP complianceProcess Mastering contains two fully completed sample Process Masters as well as numerous improvement examples. An appendix provides blank Process Master forms and shows you how to use a Deployment Flow Chart.

A Detailed Roadmap for Companies at Various Stages of Development on How to Get to the Next Level. Leaders and employees of growing firms want ideas and tools they can implement immediately to improve some aspect of their business. Verne Harnish, serial entrepreneur, advisor, and venture investor, brings to business leaders the fundamentals that produce real wealth—the same habits that typified American business magnate John D. Rockefeller’s disciplined approach to business. Harnish masterfully intertwines the legendary business philosophy of Rockefeller with lessons to be learned from ten extraordinary organizations. Aiming to empower present-day business leaders, this remarkably successful book includes invaluable lessons from real-world case studies. A treasure trove of practical situations teeming with insights and actionable recommendations, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits will help you unlock the secrets to scaling up your enterprise while simultaneously sidestepping the pitfalls that plague new ventures. From seasoned industry titans to ambitious start-up founders, anyone can swiftly implement these teachings for immediate impact.

Do you need to learn how to use Microsoft Teams? Are you questioning how to drive user adoption, govern content, and manage access for your Teams deployment? Either way, Mastering Microsoft Teams is your one-stop-shop to learning everything you need to know to find success with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft’s new chat-based collaboration software has many rich features that enable teams to be more efficient, and save valuable time and resources. However, as with all software, there is a learning curve and pitfalls that should be avoided. Begin by learning the core components and use cases for Teams. From there the authors guide you through ideas to create governance and adoption plans that make sense for your organization or customer. Wrap up with an understanding of features and services in progress, and a road map to the future of the product. What You'll Learn Implement, use, and manage Microsoft Teams Understand how Teams drives productivity and engagement by combining the functionality of Microsoft Groups, SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, and other services in one location Govern, explain, and use Teams in your organization Know the pitfalls to avoid that may create challenges in your usage of Teams Become familiar with the functionality and components of Teams via walkthroughs, including opportunities for automating business processes in Teams Who This Book Is For Anyone who wants to learn Microsoft Teams. To get the most out of the book, a basic understanding of Office 365 and a subscription, including a Microsoft Teams license, is useful.

Read This Before Our Next Meeting is Al Pittampalli's accessible guide on making meetings more effective, efficient, and worthy of attending The average office worker spends eleven hours in meetings every week. Yet all that time sitting around a conference table hasn't made us more productive. If anything, meetings have made work worse. Traditional meetings reduce efficiency, kill urgency, and breed compromise and complacency. But there is a solution, a way to have fewer, shorter, more purposeful meetings: Al Pittampalli's Modern Meeting Standard. By following its eight simple but radical principles you may never have to attend a useless meeting again. 'I dutifully avoid meetings whenever possible, which is pretty much always. If I were to go to meetings, though, I'd want Al to run them.' Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Conformity

With business and organisations moving at an ever-faster pace and facing evermore demanding challenges, the need for efficient, succinct and productive interaction between individuals of those businesses and organisations is more important than ever. With the bounds of communication restrictions abandoned through technological advances (we can now see and hear anyone across any manner of virtual platforms anywhere around the globe) and with a greater understanding of the underlying dynamics of human interaction, unprecedented pressure has been thrust upon the individual or individuals who, often, enable these dynamic interactions: the facilitator. Many of us have, at one time or other, been responsible for a meeting – whether between a small number of individuals or an entire organisation of hundreds, or possibly thousands, of businessmen and women. Or, perhaps, we’ve had to be the mediator in a family dispute closer to home or managed a discussion between two feuding friends or colleagues. One way or another, chances are, all of us have been a facilitator at some point in our lives. With the ever-growing demands placed on facilitators, this book delivers a methodical and structured approach to facilitation. This book is the definitive guide to instruct and assist facilitators – both new and experienced – with a set of guidelines and underlying theory that will benefit any facilitator, whether as a mediator between two individuals, single-handedly facilitating a group of 100 or working as part of a facilitation team in a multinational corporation. The first part of the book develops the core basic skills of those new to the art of facilitating. There are many examples and exercises to show the reader how to apply them in different situations. The second part of the book is for more experienced facilitators as it focuses on more advanced skills and tackling difficult situations. Specific tools and techniques are illustrated for the reader. Essentially, this book is aimed at developing and mastering the art of facilitation. Facilitation is the art of getting the best out of groups of people to brainstorm, solve problems and gain consensus. Based on 30 years’ experience of the author and running multiple facilitation training courses across the globe, this book is aimed at upskilling people, managers and leaders to drive change and consensus with groups through running workshops and meetings.