A dear friend and true expert, Dr. Eleanor Henry, writes on how to manage meetings.
By Dr. Eleanor Henry
“Last week’s meeting would have started on time, but the starting time wasn’t emailed out until one hour before, so the participants, the few which showed up, straggled in and began work 15 minutes late. The room was hot and muggy from a recent air conditioner breakdown. The chair opened the meeting but the minutes from the meeting before were not done so the participants could not approve the old minutes. Also, no one remembered all of the open action items. It didn’t matter because 7 people were required for a quorum and only 6 attended. The agenda wasn’t complete and the read-aheads that the briefers provided were not distributed before hand. Others wanted to call in but could not because no one had arranged a dial-in link. Even if there had been, the racket from hammers and drills of people trying to fix the air conditioning in the other room was nearly deafening. The briefer struggled to make himself heard above the din. The computer, slide projector and screen hadn’t been set up and no copies of the slides were available, so the attendees huddled around the briefer’s 15 inch computer screen. At least they could hear him better.”
Continue reading “Administrative Support – How to Manage a Meeting”
