Number 1: Run your business with meetings
The first thing I want to talk about meetings. That’s the big one.
That is the fundamental way you stop the queue outside your door. You run your business more with meetings.
Number 2: Plan for your meetings for the year
The second thing is you need to set out through a day, through a week, through a month, through three months, through a year, what meetings you need to have.
Number 3: Start your meetings with a Direction Statement
Your meetings need to be shorter, and the way that we make them shorter is we start them with what I call a Direction Statement. And what that means is if I’m having a meeting with somebody, even if it’s on Zoom or Skype, it’s a matter of saying so what do we wanna achieve, we have half an hour, what is it that we want to achieve in this meeting today?
Number 4: You need agendas for your meetings
All of your meetings need agendas. You need to know for each meeting, the things that you are going to get through.
You know, loosely, these agendas, especially if these are review meetings or catch up meetings, or project meetings, it’s a matter of:
- What happened since we spoke last time?
- What did we say last time we wanted to do?
- What’s happened?
- And then what is gonna happen going forward?
Number 5: Timekeeping in meetings
If any of your regular meetings go over 30 minutes it’s gone way too long. What happens is we start a meeting at 10, it’s supposed to go for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, we’re still in there at 11, your whole day is screwed when that happens.
So keep your meetings to the time you’ve got and make sure you get through your agenda.
Number 6: Re-schedule important topics that come up
What do you do when something important comes up in a quick review meeting?
So, when something comes up outside of the agenda in these short meetings, then you reschedule it for later on.
So, it may be something you might need to do some work on a whiteboard. It might be an hour-long meeting. You can’t go off on a tangent in this meeting and start talking about that. Re-schedule it for another time!
Number 7: Don’t let people high-jack your meetings
This is an interesting one. What you’ll have in your business is people who high-jack meetings. These are the people who are sitting in front of you, and they want tell you a great, big, long story. Or they tell you what you need to get through. or they don’t know how to do something… And it’s actually just high jacking. You just stick to the program. You stick to the meeting and you be very careful about how you construct the 20 minutes. If you’ve been to a seminar of mine, you know how they go. I go hard, fast, down-to-earth. If anyone tries to high jack one of my days, then I cut ’em off at the knees. I’ll literally say we’re not doing that now. That is not for this session. And you need to start leading these meetings in that way.
There you are. There’s a whole raft of things that hopefully will help you around the daily interruptions. It’s not just about saying no, it’s not just about closing your door, you can’t just do that. It’s about that, plus planning, plus the meetings you run, plus the agendas you run, plus holding everybody to those agendas.
I hope that helps, if there are any questions, just send me a note at peter@petergilchrist.com.au
If you are ready to get these, and so many more, systems and strategies sorted, once and for all, join me at my upcoming management targeted seminar series coming to a city near you!
There are 3 powerful workshops currently on offer!
Upcoming Seminars:
https://petergilchrist.com.au/seminar-effectiveness-for-selling-managers/
https://petergilchrist.com.au/seminar-how-to-run-effective-1on1s/
https://petergilchrist.com.au/seminar-coaching-techniques/
Otherwise, just get working on these powerful tips if you can’t join me for a seminar!
