Economy-crunched small businesses, stampeding to reduce payroll, need first to pull back the bells and whistles.

S C A L E   I T   B A C K.

Ideas, Proposals, Recommendations, Products, Services

Stop to think about it: If YOU are having trouble affording employee costs, your CUSTOMERS may be having trouble affording your product and service “extras.” [Restaurants have been scaling back since 2008 by offering better quality in smaller portions on slightly smaller plates!]

Let’s say you’re a consultant, and know in your heart of hearts that a client organization you work with needs to develop three new levels of consumer goods and services to stay competitive, but you also know that their naive management has failed to get its arms around the budget stranglehold that White House pressure has put on them.

You can lay it all out for them , knowing they will never pay your fee, and go down with the ship . . . or chunk up your recommended action plan to address just one new level, leaving the other two to simmer until the first of these can produce enough revenues to cover the investment and your fee, setting the stage for a level two proposal.

It’s worth the reminder that, as my father was known to exclaim and as Giovanni Torriano was first credited with recording the phrase in his Second Alphabet in 1662, “You can’t get blood out of a stone.”  And while we’re on the subject of hard subjects and difficult feats, you may want to accept the inevitable and just agree to “bite the bullet.”

In other words, when you can see that your proposal carries with it the hand-wrenching anguish that forces your client to back away from the table, scale it back. What can be accomplished by eliminating the bells and whistles and still manage to develop a new first level that’s acceptable, that can be expected to perform adequately?

Does this put a burden on you? Of course. When you may have been thinking you could do a $15,000 fee project, you find yourself settling for a smaller $4,995 fee project. What’s the answer? Do it with a $15,000 fee attitude, and use the extra time to get out and sell another client or two on projects that total $10,000.

So, now what? You lose $5? Ah, but now you have three clients and can more safely hedge your bet. If you work at it you may also generate $45,000 total a short way down the road, instead of just the opening effort for $15,000.

You can do this. The point is that everyone in business has reached a point of struggle (or at least substantial concern). How much further can this go? Will we have to go belly up? How can we pay the bills? 

Bottom Line: WE HAVE TO RISE ABOVE THESE KINDS OF THOUGHTS AND FOCUS ON HOW TO GET INCREASED SALES NOW BY OFFERING DECREASED FRILLS.

Force yourself to take a good hard look at what you’re selling and to whom. Can it be streamlined and priced lower without losing value or impact or safety? Can the excess packaging be eliminated or relaced less expensively without risking damage? Can you use 2-day Priority Mail instead of more expensive overnight shipping? 

Can you make arrangements to package the cars you sell with a gas or routine servicing giftcard? Some lawyers are doing reduced price packaging of basic family and couple’s wills. Some chiropractors will do basic 2 for 1 adjustment visits. The travel and hospitality industries constantly offer discount incentives that strip away luxury cost extras.  

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Hal@Businessworks.US 302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.   God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Guess what today is?

It’s Wedsssdaaaaay!

Wednesday is business panic day.

The orders, checks, and promises that haven’t yet appeared need to be nudged to get them in before the weekend and the house will be crawling with friends, neighbors, and in-laws all weekend so Friday is dead-in-the-water day on the job, which means –YIKES! –the orders, checks, and promises have to be in by tomorrow.

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

So what’s the short story version? If you’re the typical entrepreneur (I know, there ain’t no such thing, but there are typical entrepreneurial behaviors), you have been running by the seat of your pants (or skirt) so long that you get yourself under water without a snorkel because you simply skip over that ugly time-consuming task of planning.

Then midweek brings crisis . . . brainfreeze without a Slurpee . . . om top of the usual Wednesday collision course, there’s also that REALLY important project you’ve been putting off that needs desperately to get done, and now it has to stay on the back burner for another week. Will there ever be enough time?

Truth? No. There’ll never be enough time. 

And my best educated guess is that most small business owners and operators would almost rather have a tooth pulled than have to sit still for more than 10 minutes to map out a plan for the week every week. But, y’know what? Y’gotta!  Those who take a deep breath, settle into a comfortable chair and plan the week . . . win.

Think of it this way: If your competitors do weekly action plans, and you don’t, they win. If you both do them, you keep the playing field level. If you do them and they don’t, you take the lead. If neither of you do the,, someone else at your heels  surely will, and will surely win.

Ah, but where to start? Start with the old stuff that’s already in the hopper. Hit on it hard as you come out of the box on Monday morning. Make the calls, write the emails, motivate and inspire. Once the old stuff is moving, jump to the new tasks, contacts, ideas that are presently in the works and that need to get pushed into the spotlight.

Save the unexplored concept stuff for last. Yes, you may never get to that last category, but, hey, y;gotta eat, right? As the current Administration in Washington has conclusively proven, hopes and dreams don’t put food on the table. Let the experimental new ideas simmer. This is not the time to back away from what’s in your face.

Keep focused on the here and now as much as possible. List and combine (but chunk up) “to do” items, then prioritize them in order of immediacy. Cross them off with a highlighter (so you can return to see what was completed) as each task gets done. These pages (dated) are worth saving (like a journal), even for tax records.

Fast-paced status report review meetings are best held (with agendas distributed Friday afternoon) as early as possible on Mondays to help map out the week. (Friday is the worst day for this for a hundred reasons). Oh, and if you’re not both feet into the tech business, do it all in writing on pads. Laptops and handhelds distract attention. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors

 Thanks for visiting.    God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

I grew up with unreasonable demands being made on me and my brother and my mother by my alcoholic father. I began thinking that that was life, and all the other stuff that came my way from teachers and coaches and bigger older kids was just more of the same. So were the demands of college, grad school, and parttime jobs. Or so at least it all seemed.

The more I kept inside, the

tighter, more withdrawn

and resentful I became.

Ever feel that way yourself, or am I just imagining? Don’t we all hold onto some kind of resentment? If it has to do with responsibility, maybe it knots up our shoulders. If it’s a love relationship, it may give us chest pains or heartburn, sadly sometimes heart attacks and heart disease.

Some experience “butterflies” in their stomachs, pains in their lower backs, or legs. We get headaches when oxygen and blood flow get sidetracked from traveling freely through our necks and end up like crimped garden hoses. We run to surgeons and chiropractors and massage therapists and drugstores and liquor cabinets for relief.

Did you ever have such an explosive feeling inside that you wanted to scream, but you ended up instead making some feeble guttural sounds, swallowing the wrong way, coughing or choking, or perhaps you simply stuffed food down your throat because it’s hard to express how you feel when your ability to speak is blocked with food?

All of these symptoms and often not-such-good solutions are magnified for small business owners and managers. Besides all the everyday life stresses of family and friends, small business owners and managers cannot leave their workday traumas at their workday worksites. Doing business 24/7 is what life is about. Entrepreneuring takes guts!

When you own or run a business,

you even dream about it!

If someone insults a corporate or government guy at work–and hopefully this is a rare or never occurrence–he may feel resentful and carry it around, or dismiss it, or confront it. Insults are standard daily fare, however, for many if not most small businesses, and the pressure is enormous to not dismiss it or confront it reactively. 

“Trading insults” leaves us with more insults than we started with!

By reacting insread of responding, it will surely come back to haunt

because only reacting opens the floodgate to OVER-reacting! 

So if all of that is the valley of darkness,

how do we rise up into the light?

Well, here’s how I did it. Try this little recipe.

You might pleasantly surprise your SELF! 

First is to acknowledge that we harbor resentment and identify what circumstances or to whom we attach the ill feelings. Next is to take some deep breaths to better circulate that oxygen and blood flow. Then ask ourselves if it’s really worth hanging onto the upset feelings and to what ends or purpose?

Is it worth “hanging on” in exchange for the bitterness to take its toll on our one and only bodies that we want to have usher us into long happy and healthy lives? Take some more deep breaths. Are you so stubborn that you’re willing to give up years of life in exchange for not being a big enough person to forgive? Isn’t it time to move on?

Watch how good your body starts to feel when you finally agree to answer those questions honestly and let go of that resentment you’ve been harboring all these many days, weeks, months, years.   

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

There was a time, once upon a time, when I was young and foolish, and convinced I knew everything. Well I did know everything. Of course I did. After all, I was 29 or 30 and way past the dirt-poor boyhood lessons of life and growing up. In fact, I had been growing up in New York, which –when I look back– was a miracle all by itself. I mean, who grows up in New York?

A New Yawka? Ugh, who

wants one of them around?

It’s a weird thing when you think you know it all and have seen it all and have been there and done that and have the t-shirt, and then: swhooooosh! —out of the blue– the real you, broadsided with a new learning experience.

It happened when I was one of those hot-shot Madison Avenue advertising guys you may have seen portrayed on TV’s “Mad Men,” or maybe not. (Actually, that show was not very authentic, but what does TV have to work with except half-truths anyway?). I commuted 40 minutes each way by train into the city, M-F, creating great ads.

I married too young, and as I went “over the hill” at age 30, I was already ending a messy marriage, and winning diapers-galore legal custody of my three children (2,2, and 4), one of the twins profoundly retarded. Imagine the small army of friends, neighbors and household help (from a loyal young caring live-in couple, Wayne and Peggy).

As luck would have it, my troubled twin (now PC-termed “profoundly developmentally disabled”) slept all day and cried all night as I walked the floors with her. So with endless spare time on my hands, I made the mistake of taking up with more of the politics I’d left behind as a teenage and 20-something volunteer for the Democratic Party.

I know, I know, but it was because my parents were lifelong Democrats — “The working man’s party,” my father proudly exclaimed. I figured he should know which team was the good guys because he was of course, a working man! Besides the Democrats all spoke from the heart and made powerful promises and shook my father’s hand.

So what’s changed? The Democratic Party. It walked away. Democrats are now the party of greedy union bosses, elite academics, never-say-die tree huggers, fat and happy government employees, free handout beneficiaries . . .  and UN-American, share-the-wealth-with-thieves-and-illegals-to-build-votership idealists with no sense of reality.

Then I became an entrepreneur.

Democratic Party leadership (now there’san oxymoron!) is invested in destroying entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial spirit . . . obliterating the same entrepreneurial spirit that built this great nation. They are on a relentless anti-capitalism freight train crusade to run over and destroy small business enterprises and ownership

. . . at the expense of job creation and economic survival!

Doesn’t sound like much of a good trade-off to me, but, hey, what do I know? I’m just a transplanted New Yawka whose business is busy fighting off our great White House visionaries who obviously value votership over entrepreneurship. 

Can there be such a thing as short-sighted visionaries? How about 30 million short-circuited small business owners? How about we vote together for a change? November 6, 2012. Be there.                  

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

“I am me . . . 

in all the world,

there is no one else

exactly like me.

I am okay!”

 — World renown family therapist VIRGINIA SATIR

[What? You came here looking for that all-time great 56-year-old recording hit “Only You,” by the Platters?]

People around you may sometimes prompt you to think –because you own or run or manage a small business or professional practice– that you are Mr. or Ms. (or Dr.) Awesome in the flesh. And perhaps that’s warranted, especially if you are what’s commonly referred to as “self-made,” in which case: congratulations!

If, however, you can’t even begin to think about your business success because right now you’re down there in the trenches with America’s other 29,999,999 small business owners who are struggling to survive the fanatical progressive/socialist/liberal agenda that has steered government into a trample-free-market-competition mode.

Then the time has come to step back and take personal stock of who you are and where you’re going. And I’m sorry to tell you I can’t help you with where you’re going; only you know that answer. Godspeed!

So let’s explore the real you, the only you, the you that only your inner circle of family and friends knows. I can help you with that. I have lots of experience guiding people (especially business people) to find themselves. It’s not always easy. Some entrepreneurs thrive on making themselves be needles in a haystack.

Begin with accepting the awareness that you are unique.

There is (if you check with your friendly local DNA expert, and as Virginia Satir’s quote above says), no one else exactly like you.

Next, consider that if in fact this is true for every human on Earth, then HOW employees and customers respond to the messages you put out is never exactly the same twice.

Now that should tell you something right off the bat. What you want others to know about you, your products and services is very likely to be not what they are getting from your messages. But let’s return to you.

Government has cultivated dependency among the brain-dead, who make themselves too busy with life to bother with work. Who needs a job when you can get it all (food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education) for free? There are others who work just enough to get by, but most of them seem to have RDD (Responsibility Deficit Disorder).

You are not among those who live off of others or you wouldn’t be reading this.

But some questions for you are in order: Do you choose to make yourself too busy with work to live life? Is it essential to your survival or are your business priorities simply wrapped around “what if” worries? Do you take enough breaks and pat yourself on the back enough for the good things you do? Do you eat and sleep right?

Have you ever “almost died”?

Do you get enough exercise? Are you answering these questions truthfully? Do you realize that because you are unique, so are your needs, so is your activity level, so is your spunk and gumption, so is your faith, your sense of patriotism, and your entrepreneurial spirit? When did you last stop to think about those values and variables?

What can you do right now to give your unique self a boost?

We do, in fact, become what we think about. Have you been thinking about what you really want to become, or have you been preoccupied with being the person you think others want you to be? There’s no such thing as working smarter and not harder. The issue is one of balance. There is a way that you already know . . . and, there is prayer.      

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Hal@Businessworks.US   302.933.0116 

 Open minds open doors.

 Thanks for visiting.  God bless you. 

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

The best source of business

 is always existing and 

 past business.

What have you done lately about resurrecting contact with old friends and business associates? The amount of time, money and energy plowed into developing new business in new markets with customers and suppliers who’ve never heard of them is a phenomenal waste. Put the same effort and resources into those who already know you. 

Even brain-dead politicians know this. Why do they concentrate campaign efforts on those who have supported them in the past? Because to those people (voters), they’re known entities, and that alone is often enough to trigger contributions or in the case of business, sales. There’s no need to start the get-acquainted process from scratch.

“Go straight to the heart of the matter,”

(my father always told me!)

At the heart of winning more business in as catastrophic an economy as we’re living with, is the need to revisit, renew, and re-cultivate old friendships, old acquaintances, old customers and clients, old suppliers and vendors, old investors and lenders, old employees and employers, old partnerships and alliances. ALL former supporters.

These are people who you may have lost touch with (and perhaps on purpose), but with rapidly changing times often come changing more receptive attitudes. Someone who was an employee and left for a better career move may now be in a position of being a customer, or a referrer, or a supplier, or even an investor! How will you know? Ask.

Small business owners and managers typically avoid past contacts for many reasons, but none of those reasons (unless they would open some legal wounds) are good reasons for glossing over possible resources who have a favorable impression of you. Spend your time, money, and effort there instead of digging up new prospects!

When you communicate your message to someone who knows you, you can skip all the preambles; there’s no need to waste words explaining who you are and where you came from and how you do what you do. Go straight to the heart:  

• “I know it’s been awhile, but I thought you’d be especially interested in . . . because . . .”

Or . . . 

• “As soon as we put out this special (new product or service, warranty, price deal), I was reminded of how it would/might/does/could have great value/appeal/interest to/for you, and thought you may be interested in this ‘sneak preview’ of . . .”   

In the end, it’s all about consistently using the best sets of words to deliver your message, and targeting past and present business contacts which allows you to engage their interests without having to have them get past the preliminaries of who you are. That small difference puts you a giant step ahead in the sales or recruitment process. 

Oh, and a no-brainer by the way, you can also reach these people and get them to your website, store or office with personalized (free) emails or (inexpensive) postcards instead of extravagant network TV $pon$or$hip$.                                                                                                                 

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting. God bless you. 

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Business and personal

courage come in as many

different packages as there

are people on Earth

 To decide to live (personal or business) instead of to die takes courage. Being brave enough to step up conscious effort far surpasses the alternative of choosing to give up, give in, quit. Choosing death (personal or business) takes no inner strength, no conviction, no belief, no sense of self-worth, no guts. Yet both choices have their advocates, don’t they?

~~~~~~~~

I know many who have chosen life over death in spite of suffering:  and they are my heroes —  all of them!

I have unfortunately also known some who have simply chosen to die rather than fight to live and face the reality of their fantasies. We are rarely aware of these poor souls living among us in our work settings, neighborhoods, and families… until they bring us great sadness! 

How –after all— do we assess someone’s gumption? Isn’t gumption a (if not the) key attribute of courage?

Maybe we’re not consciousness-raised enough to tune in to others’ plights, or perhaps it’s just too overwhelming to think about? One need not be a shrink in order to sift through some obvious clues. Great amounts of ongoing, chronic, pain can often be a quit-life sign. Overall failure to adjust attitude or to respond instead of react are others.

Don’t go running around now trying to psychoanalyze your employees and family. Thoughts presented here are simply meant to trigger some awarenesses and prompt some introspection.

Perhaps the biggest and most dramatic difference between those who choose life over death has to do with whether people live most of their lives in the mentally and emotionally unhealthy “then and there” past, or the “if and when” future, vs. the far healthier and happier conscious stability of “here and now” present moment reality. 

Mental and emotional good health –even with physical suffering– means paying attention to and appreciating every present “what’s happening” moment as much of the time as possible. It means authenticity. It means seeing and hearing and responding to what’s right in front of one’s face. It’s Gestalt.

Do past and present ever come into play? Of course. We’re human.

Gestalt thinking and practice recognizes that past and future indulgences have value when they’re managed from the present. Past memories, for instance, can have a great soothing effect and enormous learning value. Future thinking is essential to survival because we must all plan and schedule.

The trick is to constantly work at keeping focused on the here and now. Generally, the more someone has one foot grounded in the existing real time world, the healthier she or he is apt to be, and the better prepared he or she will be to live (and continually choose to live) a rewarding and meaningful, make-a-difference life. 

How to get to the point of maximizing life requires some major letting go of behaviors that may be comfortable in favor of taking new pathways. And that bit of transition and personal growth takes courage.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting.

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

TY, Thank You, THX,

Thanks, Appreciation,

Appreciate, Appreciated,

Appreciative, Grateful,

Gratefulness, Gratified,

Gratification,  tks, Please,

Pls, YW, You’re Welcome!

Have you paid off  your TY IOUs lately? Do you have a list of them? Are they in some order? Which ones are the oldest? To whom do you owe more than one TY? What are they for? What were the circumstances? How long ago exactly was the favor or courtesy or thoughtfulness extended? Might it now be time to clean some of these up?

If you don’t have one, let’s start with a business list, then move on to personal, or vice versa if you prefer. I like to keep a thank you list next to my desk phone, divided into two columns: “Calls” and “Emails.” I add to them during the day between meetings, other emails, and other calls, and cross out the ones I’ve handled as each day passes.

Why? Who Cares? EVERYone cares. Which also answers the question “Why?” Simply put, there can be no better investment of your time and energy for boosting your business and personal reputations. And sales pros will tell you that personal and business reputations built on these courtesies translate directly to sales.

Oh, and let’s not forget that long-lost art of a personal handwritten thank you note stuck in the mail or office inbox. There is NOTHING compares with receiving one of those. And the busier you are, the more impact a note from you has. In other words: The more personal you can make your expression of thanks, the greater the impact!

It’s hard to beat a message that has a little hug hanging on its coattails!

Probably needless to add, but it’s well worth remembering: It’s also FREE, which makes it a no-brainer practice for business owners and operators, and especially for professional practice principals, who are seldom regarded as grateful for their patients and clients! 

Social media subscribers probably use the expressions in this post’s headline more than any other segment of society except Salvation Army Santas. It’s become standard fare Internet ettiquette. It’s the sub-culture of long-distance communications dipped in politeness and exchanged for the world to see, but seldom felt from the heart.

Twitterers send Tweets. If you like the Tweet, you respond mostly with a RE-Tweet (or RT) as a polite form of endorsement. Someone whose Tweet gets an RT, inevitably returns a TY (Thank You) note Tweet to that endorser. That endorser may send (Tweet) yet another note, like YW (You’re Welcome).

It’s said that these kinds of exchanges are all cover-ups for the acknowledged impersonalness of social media communications, that they somehow compensate for handshakes and eye contact and voice tone and inflections. Well, they don’t really. Not much could. But they do set social media cordiality apart from other media forms. 

Anyway, Thank you for visiting. I am truly grateful for the minutes you spent here, and if any of what I said is helpful to you in any way, well . . . YW.

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you. 

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Who knew?

You can end up going 

under when you’re

too over-the-top!

The boy who cried wolf… the lady doth protest too much… the sky is falling. Doomsday attitudes breed doom. We become what we think about!  

The more we think it, the more we bring it on. We become what we think about. We all know the type: the doom and gloomer — no matter what we say or do, it’s “poor me!” and “the business can never survive.”

Well, guess what? If that’s what we believe, we can bet our butts that that’s what we’ll get. We become what we think about. Why do we make it so hard on ourselves to unravel the tangled web of negativity that’s wrapped around our brains? We know better, don’t we? I mean this ain’t rocket science. It’s attitude. It’s a choice. We choose it!

So why do we choose negative thoughts and pessimism when we can just as easily choose positive thoughts and optimism? But it’s not “easy” we say. Well, then that too is a choice. We can choose to make it easy. Sounds good, but a whole lot of the problem is that the tangled web is full of then and there and if and when instead of here and now. 

Choosing to focus our minds on the here and now present moment as much as possible throughout the day (and night) is the healthiest place to be — physically (to prevent accidents, mentally (to prevent errors), and emotionally (to be able to respond instead of react!). It’s not possible 100% of the time, but it certainly can be more than it is!

We’ve all seen examples in every walk of life of unlikely people performing majestic feats only because they believed they could. We become what we think about. Believing in our selves, in things, relationships, sales, profits, innovation, productivity, and performance delivers the goods where hard work alone cannot.

I am now writing my second commissioned memoir. Both books are about a believer who has surpassed all odds –including threats at gunpoint– and succeeded by every life’s measure:

Both men believed so hard in what they were doing (and curiously couldn’t have been farther apart in their pursuits — home fabrics and public service for one, driving faith-based reform into the rough and tumble trucking industry for the other) that, without even trying, they put themselves in the right places at the right times and became winners!

Either of these men could have easily quit at any time, and lived a comfortable life, but both believed there was more to it than that. Both believed in service to others. Both had a here and now focus. Both choose prayer and faith as primary tools to nurture and support their belief systems.

Neither ever ventured “over the top”in their words and deeds, or in the ways they treated and respected others — employees, customers, suppliers, advisors, referrers–  and most importantly, their families. They were models of humility, trustworthiness, self-confidence and, though neither would admit it: inspired leadership.

In both cases, the fact that their competitors put their businesses under by talking too much and performing too little proves the point that over the top attitudes can drive business under. 

More on success? No compensation involved, but I heartily recommend Malcolm Gladwell’s book, OUTLIERS. Short. Fascinating. Challenging.

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  Open minds open doors. 

 Thanks for visiting and God bless you. 

   Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Planned and run correctly,

meetings are invaluable.

All the rest suck eggs!

Dear Boss, Please stop dragging people into meetings in order to give yourself an audience. They hate it, and you’re wasting their time as well as yours! Not to mention that time is money. Unplanned-for, slipshod-run meetings produce the exact opposite of what you need. They discourage and de-motivate. They frustrate and result in costly dumb errors that lose customers and antagonize suppliers.

All meetings? Of course not.Just the ones with no time schedule, no agenda that’s been circulated in advance and posted in the room, inadequate meeting space and supplies, no facilitative leadership, and no follow-up. That’s all. Just those. Aaaah, but wouldn’t you know it? That’s probably the majority of meetings worldwide. Now. Tomorrow.

Well, so that makes it okay because most other businesses and organizations are winging it, right? Not on your life. Not in this ever-deepening quagmire of an economy. Not in this day and age. There is no time to waste. This ain’t the good ole days! You can’t sit around with your feet up and a pot of coffee and brainstorm jokes for a couple of hours.

Meetings must be well-planned, executed, and filled with high energy. Good meetings ignite positive, problem-solving mindsets. Long-distance online meetings from Skype to Go-To-Meeting-type options can be effective tools. So can good old-fashioned teleconferences. Texting? No. Facebook chats? No. Tweets? No. Instant Messages? No.

First, hand pick participants according to what each can contribute, who has a need to know the subject matter, and whom you want to know more. Forget about titles, rank, age, or how busy people are. For long, status report or job/task review type meetings, stagger participants to come and go according to topic relevancy.

If you anticipate a meeting turning into a political firestorm, check this bit of enlightenment.

Everyone doesn’t need to be part of every discussion. When you think it through ahead of time, it’s more work and takes longer to plan, but the results will be dramatically improved, and more productive (both time and dollar-value-wise) for participants. Better-planned and led meetings can positively impact your bottom line as well. 

The single most important meeting tool and most often overlooked is the agenda. It needs to be carefully planned. It can’t be too overwhelming (more short meetings beat fewer long ones). Chunk it up! Some even attach time in minutes to each topic. Circulate it ahead of time and ask for input. Reproduce it poster-style in the meeting room.

Follow it. Do not allow anyone to not follow it. Politely thank people for off-topic comments and ask them to save them for the next meeting or include them on a separate agenda. You cannot stick to a time schedule if people sidetrack the agenda items. Be a clock watcher until it becomes second nature. Always honor start and stop times.

Hidden Agendas? Try this information on for size!

For a period of time when I had some major talker-types involved in weekly meetings, I had all the chairs removed or covered with boxes. It didn’t take long to get everyone focused on moving the agenda along quickly when they had to stand. Whatever you do, give meetings more attention. The ROI can be pleasantly surprising.   

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Hal@Businessworks.US  302.933.0116 

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