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计划并举办真正有效的会议的5.5大步骤

发布时间:2015-11-04 11:29:27 Tags:,,,,

作者:Dominik Berner

会议很无聊!

会议有时候很无聊,很拥挤,不仅会占据你的宝贵时间,同时也不能创造出理想结果。但是会议也可以很有效,具有互动性,能够推动目标的执行,甚至很有趣。所以该如何计划并举办成功的会议呢?

成功举办会议的5.5个步骤

举办成功的会议并不难,你只需要做些准备与练习便可。在讨论如何计划并组织有效会议的细节前,我想要先阐述两个非常重要的内容:如果你是召集会议者,你就需要尽可能充分地利用它。这是你的展台,所以即使你不是内容的主要贡献者,你也应该成为推动会议进展的主要力量。你要成为讨论的推进器,成为能够帮助所有人专注于会议内容而不是一直盯着时钟看的主要贡献者。就像Slayemin在下面的评论中所说的那样:“会议的真正目的是减少困惑和不确定性。如果人们参加一场会议并因此减少了困惑或不确定性,那么这便是一场出色的会议,而如果人们参加一场会议但是困惑毫未减弱,这便是一场糟糕的会议。作为会议参与者,你有可能是带着困惑和不确定性的人,也有可能是为了帮别人解开困惑的人。”

第1步:开会前就公开议程表

当你在规划会议时,你应该准备好议程表并将其发放到参与者手上。尽早完成这项工作最好,如此所有人便能够通过浏览它去判断该议程是否有必要。告诉所有参与者这场会议是关于什么及其目标是什么。这能够帮助你在之后始终紧扣主题,并避免参与者偏题去讨论其它内容。拥有一个明确的议程还能够帮助你决定谁该参与会议以及谁参加会议是在浪费时间。

第2步:拥有一个有序的议程

尝试着确保议程够短且切合主题,这能帮助你限制会议的范围,并帮助参与者保持注意力。以下是我的所有会议所拥有的议程结构:

1.介绍主题和会议目标。用几个句子向参与者介绍你将要讨论的主题。如果之前的会议也是关于这一主题,请简短地回顾下之前的内容。尽可能清楚地阐述这次会议的目标。

2.审核讨论要点以及待解决的问题。将问题分解成一些更小的部分,从而确保你能在有限时间内解决它们。在会议过程中告诉参与者“为了实现XY我们需要解决A,B和C,我想要按照这样的顺序进行讨论。”

3.讨论要点或解决问题。现在开始讨论你所提出的内容。亲自记笔记或让某些人为你记笔记。

4.明确将执行的行动项目。在会议结束后分配之后的任务。将不同行动分配给不同人并让他们记下自己的行动计划。

5.总结并确定后续会议。通过再次浏览你的笔记去总结会议,并表达出你在下次会议或截止日期前期待看到的结果。

第3步:停止喋喋不休,专注于主题

时间就是金钱,所以你肯定不想浪费时间去讨论一些无关紧要的内容。我们总是很容易看到这样的会议,即两个人开始详细讨论某些内容,而其余五个人则无聊地盯着墙发呆,因为没有人想要打断会议。对于这种情况的解决方法便是创造一种能够终止失控的讨论的环境。有时候我会在会议开始时分发一些红色纸牌并告诉参与者如果他们认为讨论对会议毫无意义,他们便能够举起纸牌。如此那个正在滔滔不绝的人就要快速结束自己的内容。而在小组中我们甚至不需要红色纸牌便能够轻松做到这点,因为所有成员都知道可以随时让其他人闭上嘴。

第4步:安排时间

避免举行超过2个小时的会议,如果你必须这么做的话,也请提前规划好适时的休息。如果没有任何休息,人们是很难保持集中一个小时以上。

在时间以及会议长度方面做个可靠的人。一定要准时参加会议,最好能提前5分钟到达,并准备好会议所需要的一切设备。会议开始后再让别人来安置投影仪并不是什么有趣的事。你应该在一开始就准备好讲义,浏览图表以及任何所需要的办公用品,如便利贴,书签,书写纸等等,如此你便不需要在会议期间花时间去找它们了。

准时结束会议是更困难的部分,但通过不断练习你便会越来越擅于做到这点。你可以先从、在议程上安排好每一项内容的时间限制,并在会议期间时刻留意时钟。通常情况下如果你能够准时作出会议总结的话会更好,即使你未能完成议程上的所有讨论要点,你都应该先停下来并将剩下的内容放到下次会议上。在一开始去估算某些内容需要花费多长时间是很困难的,这需要不断的训练,而一种有效的方法便是在会议过程中进行快速计算,如假设“5个人在开会,每个人将花5分钟去讲述相关主题,所以总共需要25分钟的时间。”

第5步:追踪讨论

这步很简单。做记录,并在会议后进行整理,然后将这些内容储存在你能快速找到的地方。将会议记录传给那些参与了会议的人,如此你便不需要反复提及同样的问题。同时你也应该鼓励人们去作记录并分享记录。

可选择的第5.5步:获得反馈

举行会议需要不断的训练并获取反馈。你应该从参与者那里获取有关会议的反馈。获得反馈的一种快速方法便是事先准备一张带有时间投入vs结果的图表并让所有人在图上留下各自的记号。如果有人表示这浪费了自己的时间,那就问清楚原因。同时在别人举行会议时也主动提供给对方反馈去鼓励他们。

在不同类型的会议上使用这些步骤

会议类型多种多样,可以是充满创造性的头脑风暴会议,也可以是公布有关你们公司关于在家办公新规定的会议。而这5个步骤适合任何类型的会议,并且你也可以进行适当调整去作用于任何特定类型的会议。

我将把我自己的会议分成4种相互重叠的类别以明确我想如何进行会议并希望获得怎样的结果。不同类别间的界线是不固定的,而了解自己处于怎样的领域能够帮助我更好地制定议程并安排会议时间。

category(from gamedev)

category(from gamedev)

情报性:目的是让参与者获得一些特定资讯,通常情况下事先的展示是一种有效方法,但是你应该避免自己滔滔不绝说个不停。确保用户的注意力集中是主要挑战之一。拥有一个明确且突出重点的议程能够帮助参与者紧跟会议进程并避免一些含糊不清的表达,从而有效地留住参与者。作为会议促进者,你的工作便是以一种简单的方式去传达事实并回答参与者所提出的任何问题。

创造性:通常情况下会议都是具有互动性的。不管是在头脑风暴还是技术设计会议中,你都应该尝试着找出一种全新方式去吸引人们的参与。在避免人们带进不符合主题的全新观点的同时避免喋喋不休并做出最佳总结是很困难的。作为会议的运行者,你的责任便是确保你的创造性过程顺利运行并确保记录下任何讨论的过程。

决定性:你已经陈列出了事实,但你还需要决定你所成列出的事实是否具有矛盾或者参与者是否能完全理解。通常情况下当你将决定性会议与情报性会议相结合时,你所面临的挑战便是做出决定并明确责任。为了确保这类型会议足够简短,你需要提供预览内容,从而让所有参与者能够安排好时间,并且也能让你有效缩短会议时间。限制这些会议的时间能够避免会议一直在兜圈子,即有时候不得不同意一些并不同意的事。

分析性:你遇到了一个问题但你却不知道引起问题的根源是什么,所以你只能请求支援并想办法找出原因。在会议开始前收集并组合任何有关问题的信息能够加快分析事实的过程。着眼于矛盾信息,检查任何矛盾并将它们呈现在参与者面前。你可能不是那个非常了解问题的人,但在此你的工作便是调解人们对于事件的不同看法。特别是当问题临界于“是谁引起了这一问题”时,而避免责备对方便是关键。分析性会议通常是紧跟创造性或决定性会议或与之结合在一起,所以你应该确保记录下会议内容方便之后的使用。

现在你就可以去开会啦!

这5.5个步骤以及4种类型的会议是你能够使用的工具,但就像任何其它工具一样,这并不是能够帮助你创造完美工作的工具。为了顺利且自信地举办会议,你需要掌握一些人际关系与人群控制技能,而这需要你投入时间进行练习。你可以使用上面的步骤作为计划并举办会议的定位点,并使用自己的个人风格与喜好去丰富会议,如此你的会议将不再无聊,而是变得更加有效,成功,且直达目标。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Five and a Half Steps to Efficient Meetings

By Dominik Berner

Meetings are boring!

Meetings are boring, overcrowded, take up much of your valuable time and don’t produce the desired results. Or they can be interactive, efficient, goal-driven, interesting and sometimes even fun. So how to go about planning and running successful meetings?

Five and a half Steps to successful meetings

Running successful meetings is not difficult; it just needs some preparation and a bit of practice. Before I go into the details on how to plan and run an efficient huddle I would like to state two very important point: If you call in a meeting, you are the one responsible to get the most out of it. It’s your show, so while you might not be the main contributor to the content be sure you are the one to drive the meeting forward. Be the facilitator of discussions, be the one to help everybody to keep the focus and last but not least be the eye that watches the clock. As Slayemin put it so aptly in the comments below: “The ultimate purpose of a meeting is to reduce confusion and uncertainty. If people go into a meeting and they leave less confused or uncertain, then it was a good meeting. If people go into a meeting and come out with the same or greater amounts of confusionion, it was a poor meeting. As a meeting attendee, you are either the one who is confused and uncertain, or the one dispelling confusion for others.”

Step 1: Send out the agenda before the meeting.

When you schedule a meeting prepare an agenda and send it to anybody involved. Preferably early enough so anybody can read through it and comment on the agenda if necessary. Tell everybody what this meeting will be about and what its goals are. This helps you also to keep the meeting on topic later on, as it prevents people from shoving in an extra discussion about something else. Having a clear agenda also helps to decide who needs to be in the meeting and who will waste his time as an over-passive listener.

Step 2: Have a well structured Agenda

Try to keep the agenda short and on topic, as this also helps to limit the scope of the meeting, which in turn helps people to sty focused. I structure almost all my meetings very similarly like this (Although often in a paraphrased way):

1.Introduction to the topic and the goal of the meeting. Take a few sentences to introduce the crowd to the topic you are about to discuss about. If there were any previous meetings to the topic do a short recap of them. And most important state the goal of this meeting as clearly as possible.

2.Assess the points to discuss or the problems to solve. Break down the problem into smaller items that can be tackled in the time you have. Tell them something along the line of “In order to achieve XY we need to solve A, B, and C and I would like to discuss this in this order”.

3.Discuss the points or solving the problems. Now go along and discuss the items you brought up. Take notes or have someone take them for you.

4.Define action items to carry out. Assign how to continue after the meeting. Assign the action items to a person and have them write their todos down.

5.Conclusion & define follow up meetings. Wrap up the meeting by going through your notes again and communicate what you expect to be done until the next meeting or deadline on the topic.

Step 3: Stop the babble, focus on the topic

Time is money, so you don’t want to waste it talking about irrelevant stuff. Often enough there are meetings where two people start to discuss something in a very detailed manner while five people sit there bored staring at the walls because nobody wants to interrupt. The solution is to create an environment where it’s ok to stop runaway discussions. I sometimes distribute red cards at the beginning of the meeting and tell people that if they are thinking that a discussion doesn’t contribute to the meeting they can raise that card. The people talking should then finish their sentence, write down the topic of the discussion and postpone it. In groups where I have done this regularly we now can do this easily without the red cards, because everybody knows that it’s ok to tell the others to shut up for now.

Step 4: Manage the time

Try not to call in meetings longer than two hours and if you have to, plan in frequent short breaks. People cannot stay concentrated for longer than one hour without a quick breather.

Be dependable when it comes to timing and duration of meetings. Be on time when starting a meeting, better yet be five minutes early and have everything setup and ready. Having ten people watch somebody fiddle around with a projector for five minutes is not funny. Have your handouts, Flip-charts, presentation and any office supplies needed such as post-its, markers and writing pads ready at the beginning so you don’t have to run off to find them in the meeting.

Ending the meeting on time is the harder part but with a bit of training this becomes easy as well. Start out by time boxing the items on the agenda, and have an eye on the clock during the meeting. Often it’s better to conclude a meeting on time, even if you have not reached all the discussion points on the agenda, take a breather and schedule the next meeting at a close time in the future. Estimating how much time something takes is hard at first and needs a bit of training but a good guideline is to do a quick calculation along the line: “five people are in the meeting, everybody will talk 5 minutes about the subject, so 25 minutes it is.”

Step 5: Track the discussions

This one is simple. Take notes, sort them after the meeting and archive them in a place where you can find them again. Distribute the notes to the people involved between meetings, so you don’t need to raise the same issues over and over. Also encourage others to take (& share) their personal notes.

Optional Step 5.5: Get Feedback

Running meetings takes training and training needs feedback. Get feedback on how the meeting went from the participants. One quick way to get feedback is to prepare a flipchart with a pre-drawn graph on time invested vs. outcome and have everybody leave a tick-mark on the graph. Follow up with the people who think they wasted the time, ask them why. Also give others feedback when they run a meeting to encourage them to do the same.

Using this on different kinds of meetings

Meetings can span a very large range from all-out creative brainstorming sessions to the dry presentation of your new company regulation on home-office work. While the five steps fit any kind of meetings, they can be tailored a bit to fit any particular style of meetings.

I tend to place my meetings into four overlapping categories to get a first grip on how I want to run a meeting and what to expect as outcome. The boundaries between the categories are fluid but knowing in which area I am usually helps me in setting up the agenda and time frame of a meeting.

Informative: The purpose is to fill in the attendees with certain kind information, frontal presentation is often the way to go, but restrain yourself from droning away. Keeping your audience’s attention up is one of the key challenges. Having a clear and focused agenda that helps people follow up the progress of the meeting and stopping any unnecessary babble helps to avoid losing the audience. Your job as the facilitator of the meeting is to get the facts across in a concise manner and answer any questions from your audience to their satisfaction.

Creative:Usually the most interactive kind of meeting. You try to find out something new, whether an artsy brainstorming session or a technical design meeting usually you get the crowd to participate. Challenges are to restrain run-away discussions and actually find a conclusion while not restraining the people from getting new ideas in. As the runner of the meeting you are responsible that your creative process runs smoothly and ensure and document the progress of any discussions and ideas.

Decisive: You got the facts laid out but you need to find a decision on something where the facts are already laid out but might be conflicting or not yet fully understood. Often combined with the informative meeting, the challenge here is to actually get a decision to made and responsibilities cleared. To keep these kinds of meetings short having a pre-read where everybody can get up to date in his or her own time helps shorten these meetings. Time boxing these meetings helps to avoid running a discussion in circles, sometimes one has to agree to disagree but still decide for one option.

Analytical: You got a problem here but we don’t know what (or who) caused it, so you call in the gang and to figure out the why. Collecting and consolidating any information on the problem before the meeting will speed up the actual process of analyzing the facts. Have an eye on conflicting information, check for any inconsistencies and bring them to the attention of the attendees. You might not be the one person with the deepest insights into the problem but your job here is to mediate between multiple different opinions on the state of affairs. Especially when the question borders on the “who caused it” avoiding slipping into a blame-frame is often a key. Analytical meetings are often followed or interwoven with creative or decisive meetings so be sure to track and document the meeting for further use.

Now Meet up!

The five (and a half) steps and the four flavors of meetings are tools for you to use, but said that as with everything it’s practice and not the tools that make perfect work. To run meetings smoothly and confidently you will need some interpersonal and crowd control skills which will come with practice and time. Use the five steps as an anchor point for planning and running meetings, decorate them with your personal style and preferences and your meetings will never be boring again but efficient, goal oriented and successful.(source:gamedev

 


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