To Meet or NOT To Meet?: 10 Tips for Practically Perfect Meetings

By Dana Wasson

A fast, informative and fun book brimming with ideas that will change the way you think about every meeting you either manage or attend. All of these ideas are easy to embrace as either a meeting organizer or attendee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dana Wasson
• Release date: Jan 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781942574378

Dana Wasson

Dana Wright-Wasson has been writing all her life. A third generation San Franciscan, she's led hundreds, maybe thousands of meetings. She knows what makes a good meeting work, from good planning and preparation, to shaking things up so people are excited to participate. In her book, We've Got to START Meeting Like This, she gives tips on how to plan and deliver a successful conference or retreat, the special events that bring lots of people together. To Meet or NOT To Meet shares tips for those regular weekly meetings so the right people show up, contribute, and leave prepared to take action. Dana is PASSIONATE about engaging people. She works as a visual facilitator, using large sheets of paper and a colorful palette of markers to help groups tell their stories, find meaning, and take action. She is the founder of a successful consulting firm specializing in employee engagement, strategic planning, and leadership development. When she's not working, she's traveling with her husband, visiting her two daughters, or playing with her Goldendoodle, Mysti.

Book preview

To Meet or NOT To Meet?

10 Tips for Practically Perfect Meetings

by Dana Wright

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Dana Wright. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Requests for permission should be addressed to: [e-mail]

This book may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please visit: www.StartMeetingLikeThis.com

Edited by Michelle Auerbach

Illustrations by Sam Bradd

Cover design by Dana Wright and Carolyn Oakley, Luminous Moon Design

Layout by Carolyn Oakley, Luminous Moon Design

Author photo by Deidre Fuller

The author has made every attempt to ensure that information in this book is accurate, and is not responsible for any loss, damage, injury, or inconvenience that may occur while using this information.

ISBN-13: 978-1-942574-37-8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Let's Face It. Bad Meetings Suck.

Top 5 Complaints People Have About Meetings

Let’s Change That! 10 Tips for Practically Perfect Meetings

Ten Tips...

Tip #1: Start by Getting Organized

Tip #2: Invite the Right People

Tip #3: Size Matters

Tip #4: What Will We Talk About?

Tip #5: Rules Are Rules

Tip #6: Make it VISIBLE

Tip #7: Focus and Be Brave!

Tip #8: Start on Time, End on Time

Tip #9: Who Does What by When?

Tip #10: How’d We Do?

Meeting In A Box

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

Bad meetings suck.

It’s a fact of life.

When you’re asked to attend a meeting, your response is Oh no! There goes a part of my life I’ll never get back. And, you plan accordingly. Sadly, I’ve even worked with leaders who plan their meetings and EXPECT them to be boring.

No! It absolutely doesn’t have to be that way.

When you take apart what really doesn’t work about meetings, you find that there are some basic complaints about wasted time and energy at or around the meeting. Once those complaints are addressed, meetings can be productive. Meetings can be engaging. Meetings can even be fun.

For more than 20 years, it has been my job (and my passion) to make meetings practically perfect. When meetings are designed in the right ways (and there’s no one right way, just lots of options), they draw people in and make the work more productive. Instead of dreading the very idea of a meeting, you find yourself actually looking forward to the next one.

Coming next are the top complaints about what makes meetings suck. These are the things clients, meeting attendees, and people all over the world have told me so many times I’ve memorized them. I’m sure you’ll identify with some, or all, of them. And, if you’re planning a meeting, this list is a great way to diagnose what you may be doing wrong, so you can fix it before it’s too late.

Then, there are 10 Tips to make meetings fun and functional. Follow these tips for meeting bliss. You’ll find, with just these ten tips, your meetings are better attended, more productive, more fun, and that you get more real work done. Try it, you’ll see.

This book will give you all the tools you need to improve your meetings. You may find you want more – more information, more tools and tips. If that’s the case, you can use my MEETING IN A BOX tools to go one step further.

Questions? More ideas? More Passion? Feel free to