RED ALERT FOR LEADERS

Organizations must have meetings in order to perform. That’s an axiom.

Most meetings are required for planning and review, top-down. Strategic. Tactical. Operational. Financial. Quality.

Conducting a meeting is an art. If one is a pure left-brain thinker, it can be a waste of time and cost.

Leaders must answer the following questions in order to conduct an effective meeting:

1. Does the meeting have a clear objective?
2. Does the meeting have an agenda that engages all members present in the meeting?
3. Do the members have pre-work to do, to enable economy of time?
4. Does the meeting have a starting time? And a closing time?

If the answer is “No” to any one of the above four questions, you have a hatchery for Cost Of Poor Quality (COPQ)! The hen for this hatchery being the Leader.

It is worth noting that the lost opportunity costs for Leaders and Managers owing to ineffective meetings is alarming…. Think about the resultant  cascading delays in managerial processes, as well as, customer dissatisfaction….. It all adds up to a significant COPQ that is eating into the bottom-line…. This is a RED ALERT for Leaders.

Over the past 30 years, I have attended hundreds of meetings. The ones that proved a ”Wow” are:

1. Tata Steel Quality Council Meetings chaired by Dr J J Irani
2. Qimpro Awards Panel of Judges Meeting chaired by Mr Ratan Tata
3. Qimpro Awards Panel of Judges Meeting chaired by Dr E Sreedharan
4. IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Award Panel of Judges Meeting chaired by Dr Mohandas Pai.

On reflection, what did they have in common? Apart from the four requirements for an effective meeting:

1. Each knew how to keep a meeting on track
2. Each knew how to extract participation from every member
3. Each knew how to facilitate a consensus
4. Each had an infectious sense of humour.

Are you surprised?