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GET
ORGANIZED – Put together a binder to hold all your meeting
planning information, with the following tabs: Agenda, Tasks,
Presentations, Contacts, Location, Budget, Logistics, and
Miscellaneous. Keep your notes and key meeting documents in the
binder and keep the binder close at hand. You’ll score points when
you’re called into the boss’s office and you have all the key
meeting info and status updates at your fingertips. And – you won’t
have to worry about losing an important piece of paper. It’s in
there somewhere.
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FIND THE RIGHT PLACE – Choose
or recommend a location after considering what you need and who can
provide it when you need it – at the right price. Be practical.
What people can promise is less important than what they can
deliver. Ask for references when you need to go off-site.
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LISTEN TO EXPERIENCE
- If you're planning a meeting that others have planned before,
talk with them to see what worked and what didn't.
See if you can get your hands on any
evaluations or other input from former participants.
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ASSESS YOUR AGENDA – Walk
through your planned agenda mentally and consider how to keep an
audience interested. Keep the presentations as short as possible.
Break long subjects into sections. Write clear, compelling
descriptions of the topics for the pre-conference materials you send
to participants. Let participants know specifically what they’ll
learn or accomplish during each part of the meeting.
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MIND THE
MOVERS AND SHAKERS -- Determine what choices you can make and
who you need to go to for other decisions. When you need someone
else to make a decision, collect data first and make a
recommendation based on the facts. Try to collect decisions so you
can present several at a time instead of interrupting your decision
maker every time you need an answer.
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SAVE THEM
FROM THEMSELVES -- When you don’t agree with a decision or want
to keep someone (like your boss) from making a mistake,
diplomatically point out the likely consequences of different
courses of action and steer the decision maker toward the right
choice with facts and logic. Always sell the advantages of your
recommendation. If you can’t get 100% of what you’re recommending,
go for the highest percentage possible.
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GET A
ROOM WITH A VIEW – Visit the proposed site of your meeting and
mentally fill it with your audience. Make sure you have enough
seating and that everyone will be able to see your presenters and
any pictures, graphics or video they’ll use. It’s a common mistake
to put screens so low that audience members can’t see the bottom
half of the picture because their view is blocked by the folks
seated in front of them. Make sure the sound system is adequate and
that everyone will be able to hear clearly. Look at details like
lighting. Do the room lights wash out the screen? When you dim the
lights so your audience can see the screen, can your speaker still
see his notes?
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GO FOR
THE GOLD – Get the best speakers possible. A good speaker is
like a teacher who understands that information is worthless unless
you can help your audience absorb it. Beware of experts who can’t
communicate. Avoid as the plague “death by text” experts who want
to simply read their slides.
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ACCEPT NO
SUBSTITUTES – When you schedule speakers, let them know to
contact you immediately if they find out they can’t attend as
scheduled. Make it diplomatically clear that substitutes are your
decision. You don’t want to fill the space with a substandard
“sub.” You’re the advocate for every person in that audience. You
may want to have some good, relevant back-up presenters prepared,
just in case.
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PREPARE
YOUR SPEAKERS – Talk with your speakers about what their
presentations will accomplish. Preview each speaker’s audio visual
materials ahead of time and work with them to ensure they are clear,
concise and in a format you can use. If a speaker has graphics with
text too small to read, either revise them to be readable or
eliminate them. Get your speakers’ agreement to stay within their
allotted time limits, including any planned Q&A sessions. Give
speakers clear directions to ensure they arrive on time and in the
right place.
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MAKE
FRIENDS – Whether you’ll work with a hotel staff or fellow
employees, you’re going to depend on the folks who support your
meeting . Get to know the key players well before your event and
keep them up-to-date on your plans and any changes. Consider their
needs as well as yours and be flexible where it won’t compromise the
quality of your meeting. Showing consideration can bring out the
best in people and help ensure everyone cares about good results.
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GET IT IN
WRITING – Face-to-face conversations and telephone calls are
great, but confirm all reservations, bookings, and similar details –
including important changes – in writing. Trading email is a great,
fast way to confirm changes. It’s easy for someone to miss or forget a
detail after a conversation. A polite email listing details you’ve
discussed and asking someone to reply and confirm is excellent
insurance against unpleasant -- or disastrous -- surprises.
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DON’T
FORGET THE FUN – People tend to work together better when
there’s some fun involved in the process. A speaker who knows how
to use humor, some comedy videos, a raffle with fun prizes – can all
contribute toward a more congenial and more successful meeting.
Just a word of caution. It’s easy for a vendor to label something
“hilarious” that’s actually lame. Preview any
“comedy” before incorporating it into your meeting to make sure it
lives up to its billing and is right for your audience.
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DO A
DRESS REHEARSAL – Schedule enough time to test out all the
audio/visual elements of your meeting well before it starts – if
possible, the night before. Run through your presenter’s audio
visual support, such as PowerPoint presentations or audio --
preferably with each presenter present. Everything should be tested
and ready before your meeting starts. From running presentations to
turning microphones and lights on and off -- make sure your
technical staff (or the lucky person who has the title for the day)
knows what switches to flip – and when.
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START AND
STAY ON TIME – Start your meeting when you say you’ll start.
Tell your audience you know their time is valuable and that you plan
to keep the meeting on schedule. It’s usually a good idea to ask
the audience to hold their questions until the end of each
presentation to ensure that a speaker can make all his key points.
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CONSIDER
COMMUNICATIONS – Think about how your meeting participants will
need to communicate with the outside world. Cell phones and
portable email devices are a reality you’ll have to deal with. At
the beginning of your meeting, ask your audience to turn off their
cell phones or set them on “vibrate.” Allow enough time on breaks
for people to hit the rest rooms and also check their voicemail and
return a few calls.
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RENT A COMMUNICATIONS
ROOM -- For large meetings, consider positioning a secretary in
a communications room (preferably near the meeting room) with a
phone, a fax machine and some computers with Internet access for
email -- or access lines for laptops. Have your meeting
participants leave the communications room “reach number” with their
offices so the secretary can take messages. This makes it more
likely participants will comply when you ask them to turn off their
cell phones -- and they’ll have a person available to seek them out
in an emergency. The secretary can leave messages with
participants’ names on a message board outside the meeting room,
although this is less necessary for people who can check their
voicemail or answering machines. Still, the more you can wean
people from their electronic communications devices during your
meeting – the better.
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CARD YOUR
SPEAKERS – Show your speakers cards during their presentations
that indicate how much time they have remaining. For example: “30
MIN.” Make sure the speakers see the cards, but that the cards
don’t distract the audience. Show a card every 15 minutes until
there are 15 minutes left. Then show a card at 10 minutes, then one
every minute from 5 minutes until time runs out.
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EDIT
YOUR HANDOUTS – The best hand-outs represent an outline of key
points and graphics that will be helpful as references to an
audience during or after a meeting. Word-for-word handouts can
distract participants from focusing on the speaker and are often
tossed after a meeting. Also, the act of taking notes helps people
remember the contents of a presentation, even if they never look at
the notes again.
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BILLBOARD
YOUR BREAKS – When you turn your audience loose for a break,
give them a specific time and reason to return, such as, “We’re
going to break for 15 minutes, and we’ll reveal our new advertising
spots promptly when we resume at 10:15 a.m. It’s 10:00 a.m. now.
See you at 10:15.”
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NUDGE
THEM BACK INTO THEIR SEATS -- Consider having someone walk into
the hall outside your meeting room and ring a bell or a chime three
minutes before the end of each break and announce, “The break is
coming to an end, please return to your seats in the meeting room.”
People often mill around in a room before a meeting re-starts. If
this is the case, just before you resume, announce from the podium
that you’ll restart the meeting in “30 seconds” and ask people to
take their seats.
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CHOOSE
SPEAKER GIFTS – Especially if you’re not paying your speakers,
it’s a nice gesture to buy each one a small, useful gift. Some
common speaker gifts include pens, flashlights, leather legal pads
or Swiss army knives.
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READY
PLAN “B” – Do a lot of “what if” thinking and prepare
contingency plans for foreseeable problems. Determine at every
point how you’d reshuffle your schedule if a speaker is late or a
“no show.” Talk with your A/V provider about being able to quickly
replace any piece of equipment that fails. Be ready to move breaks
forward or backward in time. The key is to keep the meeting moving
and make the most of your audience’s valuable time.
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MAKE
EVALUATION EASY – If you ask your participants to fill out an
evaluation form, make it easy to fill out. Let them rate each
speaker from 1-10 (10 being the highest rating) on content and 1-10
on delivery. Then allow a space for comments for each
presentation. You can ask what participants liked most about the
meeting and if there’s anything you can improve. The simpler the
form is to complete, the more likely you are to get useful feedback.
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BE AN
ADVOCATE – The biggest secret to running a successful meeting is
to be an advocate for every person in your audience. Look at
everything from your participants’ perspective and use all your
drive and ingenuity to give them the best meeting they’ve ever
attended. You’ll earn their appreciation.
