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The Well-Tempered Meeting
Some meetings you dread, others you enjoy. The good ones are the ones where you learn something, are able to explain
something, or get to see a problem resolved.
Today, almost every team is virtual to some degree -- it’s the rule, rather than the exception. In an environment where team members work
independently -- perhaps never meeting face to face, it's very important to make the most of whatever meetings do occur. A few suggestions:
- Be clear about the agenda - Distributing a written agenda ahead of time is the best approach, but may not always be necessary. A
written agenda can be skipped, as long as there's an acknowledged facilitator who understands what needs to be accomplished.
- Be clear about the time - Meetings can be seen as an interruption in a person's "real" workday, so be disciplined about
the schedule. Don't delay the start of a session because one or two people are late. You're just wasting the time of everyone else. If you can, try to end early. People love that.
- Be clear about the context - Meetings are opportunities to inform, as well as to build consensus. It never hurts to open by
restating the purpose for a particular session, or recap longer term objectives. It's also good to allow some time for general, social conversation. You want people to be relaxed and interested.
- Be clear about participation - Especially on conference calls, you can never be sure people are paying attention. (Hear that
clicking keyboard?) If everyone's not in the same room, jot down the participants' names and try to get everyone to talk at least once. Don't be threatening about it, be funny. Don't ask for general
comments and then wait out the silence. Ask questions by name.
- Be clear about Action Items - Before you break, restate whatever actions were agreed to, as well as the people who accepted the
responsibility. Even if you don't need written minutes, you need to keep track of the Action Items.
We
work more and more on our own now, setting our own schedules and blurring the line between work and non-work. But we're still social animals; we need to spend time talking and listening to each other.
K Street on the Case
With a year of work behind us, it seemed like a good time to look back and write up the
stories of what we've done.
Talking to people about KM&C can be a challenge without specific examples. That's what our case studies are meant to do, and the first three are now available at
the Knowledge Street website. There's a brief summary on the page, and a downloadable two-pager with more detail. Take a look, and if you're interested, come back from time to time. We have another
dozen in various stages of development, and will be publishing them as they're completed.
Newsletters of Note
It's so easy (and cheap) to produce an electronic newsletter, that there are thousands to
choose from. You could spend all day reading them, if you had the time. Two that we like are The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter, which originates with London-based KM consultant David Gurteen, and New Thinking, which comes from Gerry McGovern, a New Zealand
consultant on web content.
Gurteen's is a monthly release and includes links to sites he's discovered, comments on software tools, his speaking schedule and a calendar of KM events around the
world (which are also posted at his website as a free service for anyone who has an event to promote). Gurteen is known for a series of "Knowledge Cafes," (in which people gather to socialize,
drink coffee and talk about KM), and this month's newsletter includes advice about starting a cafe of your very own. But we most like David as a guide to some of the less obvious things on the Internet,
such as this month's plug for the Oxford Muse, a foundation dedicated to developing better ways of working, understanding and being
understood. It's the kind of site that makes you pause and reflect.
Gerry McGovern's New Thinking has a weekly distribution, and is generally built around a single article that speaks to some
aspect of web design. He also includes his speaking schedule, but the main article is either some kind of nuts and bolts advice for improving web content, or some kind of commentary about web design
challenges. He's recently talked about the importance of links for adding contextual value, making effective use of metadata and the power of Google as a brand. His writing style is clean and crisp, and
he always gives us good ideas. A sample: "Advertising agencies tend to design awful websites because they are obsessed with getting attention. When people come to your website, you have already got
their attention. They want to do something. They want detail. They want facts. The thing they value most is their time. So don't waste it."
If you're interested in these topics, these are
newsletters worth reading. You can subscribe through the links above.
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