Better Meetings for Everyone™
Volume 13, Issue 3
Publisher Jana M. Kemp
- Information Overload – Over Come It
- Seen Elsewhere: Meeting Room Technologies
- Meeting Quotes
- Tools & Tips
- Meetings@Work
Information Overload – Over Come It
By Jana M. Kemp
How many times in the last two weeks have you found yourself stopped in your tracks, hands up in the air, wondering how to proceed because all of the information you have is in conflict? How much junk email, mail, and voicemail are you getting each day? How many impromptu meetings are you called into? No matter how you count it, the result is an information overload that paralyzes your ability to get work done.
Recently the Idaho Commission for Libraries sponsored Stephen Abram’s keynote “The Perfect Storm – today’s information tornado.” While listening to Abram’s animated information download, I gained several insights into organizing information. For instance, Abram’s says being “intuitive is a learned behavior – when you have learned how to use information it becomes intuitive.” This means we can reduce information overloads by learning to narrow the volume of and focus in on the relevant information that we attempt to work with each day.
“Improve the quality of the questions you ask” was another provoking idea from Abram’s talk. Many organizations I work with fall down on question-asking. Instead gathering too much irrelevant information, jumping to conclusions, and acting before gathering relevant information is the prevailing workplace behavior. So the urging to “improve the quality of questions” rings out as a skill to gain for reducing workplace paralysis and information overloads.
Asking “what” questions will help you improve the quality of your questions. For example: What do we need? What caused the problem? What is working so well that we want to continue doing it? What information is most relevant to our making a decision? What is the problem that this solution solves?
Depending on how you ask “what if” questions, you can expand team thinking or you can end up paralyzing the team and preventing a decision. Asking “what if we didn’t do this” can lead to a discussion that confirms what action to take. Asking “what if this, what if that, and what if it fails” can lead to negative attitudes and to paralysis. So ask ever better questions.
While the high-wire information balancing act that we each daily engage in is not life threatening, it most certainly is exhausting. So, to increase your success, focus on information that is relevant to your daily work. Keep in view the information that may affect your work in the course of the next month and year. And improve the quality of your questions.
Meeting Room Technologies
Twelve years ago, publicly available meeting room technology grew to include teleconferencing. The early versions were jerky, but did serve to bring distant people into a sense of meeting room connection. Over the decade, technologies have improved, costs haven’t come down, and quality live-time connections have improved making meeting room interactions more realistic even when people are spread across multiple locations.
September 28th, 2006, The Wall Street Journal, ran a story headlined “Better Virtual Meetings.” The story describes the new and improved options, labeled “telepresence” rather than video-conferencing. Check it out.
Publish the agenda in advance.
Commit to ground rules and allow for flexibility.
Are held in a great location.
Are clear about whether the agenda item is a discussion or decision item.
End with an evaluation of the meeting productivity.”
These tips are from The Prouty Project’s newsletter “from 36,000 feet ... ” For more information, visit: www.proutyproject.com
TRANSLATIONS and Television Too! – Polish, Dutch and Turkish
NO! How One Simple Word Can Transform Your Life by Jana Kemp is available in English and has been translated into Polish (2005) and Dutch (2006) AND Turkish (2006). Making decisions is a daily activity. When we waffle in indecision, people start to see us as yes-people or as ineffective. So, learn to be a MASTER of NO! Meeting room coaster-tools for voting, decision workshops and decision jewelry are all found at the www.stopwaffling.com site.
Television Too: Author Jana Kemp has appeared on This Week in Sun Valley (Channel 13) with Sarah Curtis five times to spread the word about becoming a Master of NO.
Looking for a meeting facilitator, a conference speaker or a workshop presenter on the subjects of meetings, time management or decision-making? Then, visit www.JanaKemp.com for information on these services and on learning tools such as the DiSC® Behavioral Profile, time management, and managing stress.
© 2002-2008 JMK, LLC
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