Posted on May 12, 2014
I hate unproductive meetings, what can we do to make military briefings and meetings better?
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In the civilian world, we lose $37 billion a year on unproductive meetings. I guarantee when you count the government and military it is much higher!
I remember preparing days on end for a general's dog and pony show which I understand is important to do, but we didn't go over our slides because he wanted to talk about something else. i remember how the entire staff was so deflated afterwards, not because of what happened, but just because we were forced to spend so much time on making our powerpoint slides perfect (remember the fonts and format!!!)
Jeff Bezos at amazon doesn't do slides. he hates them and has the meeting agenda and notes sent out prior, then the first portion of the meeting is going through the notes, then they get to the point and out of there. The article below explains some tips, what else can we do in the military?
http://artofthinkingsmart.com/losing-37-billion-year-meeting-mistakes-making/
I remember preparing days on end for a general's dog and pony show which I understand is important to do, but we didn't go over our slides because he wanted to talk about something else. i remember how the entire staff was so deflated afterwards, not because of what happened, but just because we were forced to spend so much time on making our powerpoint slides perfect (remember the fonts and format!!!)
Jeff Bezos at amazon doesn't do slides. he hates them and has the meeting agenda and notes sent out prior, then the first portion of the meeting is going through the notes, then they get to the point and out of there. The article below explains some tips, what else can we do in the military?
http://artofthinkingsmart.com/losing-37-billion-year-meeting-mistakes-making/
Posted 10 y ago
Responses: 15
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Biggest problem with any meeting is that people are more interested in hearing themselves talk than actually saying anything.
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LTC David S. Chang, ChFC®, CLU®
had some people who definitely tried to smart and pretend talking at meetings would do it. All it did was make us angrier. Especially when you can do so much offline
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MAJ Raúl Rovira
I could not agree more. I witnessed a VTC where every O-6 in the room had to say something.
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A meeting should not just have an agenda (we are lucky if it does) but an objective with tangible results. It it does not have an objective then why are we having a meeting on it?
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Many times having a moderator will help to stop the talking heads, bring people back on topic, and keep people attuned to the agenda (of course, having an agenda is a critical aspect too).
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