Avionics News November 2015 - 58
series BUSINESS BASICS B Y G R E G L A S L O Group therapy How to make the most of avionics shop meetings T he highlight was the pizza. Yet they do have a role. It makes sense to make the Yet wrapped around mealtime was a six-hour, allmost of them, and you should approach these business hands "training session," where a pair of consultants functions with the same sense of strategy and goal-setting revealed - in exquisitely uncomfortable detail - why the you do any other part of your business. Getting there, management of the company was a bunch of knuckleheads. though, takes some thought into why you have meetings And they had the PowerPoint to prove it. in the first place - as well as how you can make them betIt may have made the short list of the worst meetings of ter. Call it studying up on group therapy, and do it to get all time, and it certainly proved the point that there is no the most bang for your meeting buck. such thing as a free lunch. Undoubtedly, just about everyone Meeting makers with any miles under his or her tires Regardless of whether you and your MEETINGS CAN CONNECT has a similar story of a meeting people hate them, meetings aren't YOU WITH YOUR TROOPS, gone bad. These staples of workaday going anywhere - and not because life - intended to bring a group of they're a hard-to-ditch tradition. YOUR MANAGERS WITH employees together for the good of Rather, it's because they're the best THEIR STAFF, AND YOUR the company - have earned a bad tool for some things. On the other, TEAM WITH YOUR CLIENTS. rap, often for good reason. they're not so useful for others. Your But that's as unnecessary as it is first step is recognizing the difference. unfortunate. Meetings can connect you As you well know, you might call with your troops, your managers with a meeting for a variety of reasons, their staff, and your team with your such as status updates, training, clients. If done well, it's a worthwhile brainstorming, performance conversathing, for plenty of obvious reasons. tions or project planning. Whichever Still, meetings take up a lot of you schedule, a successful gathering time, and many employees resent serves one (and only one) of three the intrusion when the ends don't justify the means. Your roles, according to Sharlyn Lauby, author of Essential results may differ, but the average office worker spends Meetings Blueprints for Managers: to provide information about 16 hours a week in meetings, and they consider more so everyone hears it the same way; to create a mechanism than 25 percent of that time to be wasted, according to a for decision-making and buy-in; and to allow discussion or report in Fast Company magazine. It's small wonder that, feedback. altogether, workers rank meetings as the No. 1 office proWith the first, you avoid wasting time by writing an ductivity killer, according to a survey by Salary.com. email or waiting for a reply to an urgent question when a IF DONE WELL, IT'S A WORTHWHILE THING, FOR PLENTY OF OBVIOUS REASONS. 58 avionics news * november 2015