辽宁省第二季“时代之歌”文化惠民演出季5月开幕

“Let’s have a meeting to talk about meetings,” said no one ever. But maybe we should. A Microsoft global survey found the #1 workplace distraction is inefficient meetings. The #2? Too many of them. Sound familiar? Last week, I led a meeting effectiveness workshop for a team of 15 at the request of their practice leader—who happens to be my husband. His team’s meeting struggles? Rambling discussions, uneven engagement, unclear outcomes, and lack of follow-through. He thought a meeting AI tool might fix it. Nope. AI can help document meetings, but it can’t make people prepare better, participate more, or drive decisions. The fix? It’s not “Have an agenda”. It’s setting the right meeting norms. My husband was hesitant to put me in the late morning slot–worried the team would tune out before lunch. I told him, “Put me in, coach. I’ll show you engagement.” And I did. For 90 minutes, we tackled meeting norms head-on through interactive discussions and small group exercises. Here are 5 norms they worked through to transform their meetings: 1?? ?????? ?????????? ???????????????? ?????? ???????????? ?? ??????????????. An agenda is a list of topics. A purpose answers: What critical decision needs to be made? What problem are we solving? Why does this require a discussion? If you can’t summarize the purpose in one sentence with an action verb, you don’t need a meeting. 2?? ???? ?????????????????????? ?????????? ??????’?? ???? ?????? ????????. Some discussions only need two people; others require a small group or the full team. Match the participants and group size to the topic and purpose.? 3?? ???????????? ???????? ?????? ?????? ???? ??????????????. Before the meeting, define the problem or goal. Identify potential solutions. Recommend one. Outline your criteria for selecting the solution(s). Back it up with data or other relevant information. Preparation = productivity. 4?? ???????????? ?? ?????????????????????? ???? ???????????? ?????? ????????????????????. A good facilitator keeps conversations on track, reins in tangents, and ensures all voices –not just the loudest–are heard. Facilitation matters more than the agenda. 5?? ?????? ???????? ?????????? ????????????????. Summarize decisions. Assign action items. Set deadlines. Follow-up to ensure accountability and progress. A meeting without follow-through is just wasted time. The outcome of the workshop? 100% engagement. (One person even admitted she normally tunes out in these things but stayed engaged the entire time!) More importantly, the team aligned on meeting norms and left with actionable steps to improve. Want better meetings? Set better norms. Focus on facilitation. What’s one meeting tip that’s worked well for your team?

What’s a great team meeting? Team meetings are a significant investment of time, and making them truly valuable is essential. After years of leading small and large teams, I’ve found that every team should have a few objectives. My framework is called TOP ?? 1. Transparency: Every leader should try to provide full context on cross-functional projects esp those that impact them. 2. Order: Team members should leave the meeting with a clear understanding of what they should be working short and long term. 3. Progress: Meetings should be a catalyst for forward momentum. Each should result in clear next steps that move the team towards its goals. My own team meetings often involve 10+ hours of collective time, so I focus on maximizing efficiency and impact. We start by sourcing discussion topics from the entire team—ensuring everyone feels heard and involved in shaping the agenda. I structure the meetings into three core parts: - Newsflash: This is where I provide organizational context—highlighting wins, team recognitions, key updates, big deals won or lost, and any major changes in leadership or product direction. - Core discussion: The team discusses pre-submitted topics with a clear focus. The goal is to unblock each other. Each topic has context, the owner knows what to do next, and they can ask for help if needed. - Action items: Every discussion ends with actionable next steps, assigning an owner, a specific action, and a due date. If there’s no action required, we close the topic. I avoid adding unnecessary elements like guest speakers or deep dives—they’re valuable as one-offs but not as regular agenda items. And I make sure to avoid lengthy debates. If something requires deeper analysis, we take it offline and revisit later. Finally, I make every attempt to start and end without the allocated 45 minutes. If you are stuck or feel you don’t have enough things to talk about, ask your team. #Leadership

It's not just about setting goals for the company/department/team, it's about how you *operationalize* them. Here are my 8 steps to consider for for actioning the goals you just decided on. I love this time of the year, I really do. Everyone is buzzing with goals – and the team is (hopefully!) feeling energized. But like personal new years resolutions, you start to see the excitement and clarity fizzle out in the upcoming months. Work happens. Requests happen. Fire drills and pivots happen. It's naive to believe the team will remember the goals if we don't exhaustively repeat and document them, too. Just because we mentioned it in a call or meeting doesn't equate to 100% recall. Here are the 8 steps I saw work in-house to combat this and operationalize the goals (they need a plan!): 1. Set the goals at the company-level and ensure they cascade down (Company > department > team > individual) 2. Document these goals in a series of documents correlated to the audience waterfall (The company ones should be readily available for anyone to find -- pinning in a general channel is a great option, dept. ones in dept. channels, etc.) 3. Ensure you discuss and/or document how you backed into the goals (what's the why and the how) and link to where you're tracking the progress/performance (transparency) 4. Have dept./team leads decide on their goals that back into the company goals (bonus points if the leads bring in their ICs to the process, too) -- being part of the process gives into more buy-in 5. Use 1-1s to ensure *everyone* understands the company, dept., and team goals, and then use this time to discuss their individual goals that tie into these 6. Designate team owners of the goals (ideally not managers). These are the champions for that individual goal, and have a responsibility to: 1) Create a document for that individual goal 2) Create a work roadmap to achieve the goal 3) Track & report on the goal 4) work with stakeholders to project manage the work. I find this step SO helpful - and where the magic of operationalizing comes into play. This document can also be a table of contents that hyperlinks out to individual project briefs and other documents for the work. I know this may feel like documentation overload, but it's absolutely needed. It creates clarity. 7. Repeat the goals exhaustively. Anyone should be able to rattle off the goals at any time if you repeat it enough – power of repetition! Bonus point if you can come up with a catchy acronym. 8. Report on the goals monthly and quarterly via performance and progress Tl;dr: power of repetition (and when you think you've said it too many times, say it again), transparency, documentation, team activation, designated owners, mini work plans, and consistent reporting/tracking. What'd I miss, or what would you add?