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time management

Keep Your Meetings on Time

June 2, 2010 by Sarah Leave a Comment

Keep Your Meetings on Time

Let’s face it, meetings aren’t exactly everyone’s favorite activity, and a meeting that runs long leaves everyone tired and dragging and behind on the rest of the day’s goals. And a meeting that starts late can be just as bad. But if you’re planning a meeting for your employees, there are steps you can take to ensure your meeting starts on time and finishes on time.

The first thing you must do is let your employees know you will not tolerate tardiness. Teachers and schools reward and punish students who are always on time or never on time and in a way, you, as the boss, manager, or meeting planner are much like a teacher. If you want to change your attendees’ behavior, you must change your own behavior. If someone is more than five minutes late to a meeting, let them know that this will not be tolerated unless circumstances are extreme. When everyone is on time, reward them. You’ll set the standard for proper behavior and let everyone know you are taking these meetings seriously.

But before you can punish or reward your employees, you have to make sure they know when your meeting will begin and they are expected to be on time. When you first announce your meeting, make sure you clearly state the time when your meeting will begin; make sure you you state that meetings will begin exactly at this time and that attendees should not be late. You can also send out a reminder, usually via email, about half an hour before the meeting begins.

Next you’ll want to follow through with your plan. If your meeting is to begin at 10:00 AM, begin it exactly at 10:00 AM, not 10:15 and not when everyone’s finally arrived. That means you must be on time, too. If you’ve made a big deal about being on time to your employees, you’ll be awfully embarrassed if everyone’s sitting there, waiting, when you’re ten minutes late. As a matter of fact, it’s probably best to be at least 10-15 minutes early, and it’s probably best to go over your agenda, make sure you know your material and what you need to cover.

So, if you’ve done all this and you still don’t have everyone attending on time, then it’s time to let your employees know you mean business. Close the door to the meeting room and put a note on the door that says the meeting was supposed to start at 10:00 AM. Latecomers will most likely be worried about the consequences and try harder in the future. Finally, if you do begin a meeting later than you intended, make sure you end it on time anyway. Chances are, your employees do have other tasks to accomplish and it’s wrong to punish those who were on time for your own faults.


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Tagged: meetings, on time, punctuality, SMBs, time management

Utilizing Your Day To The Fullest

October 2, 2007 by Bill Rogers Leave a Comment

Something I suffered from in the past was lack of an effective time management strategy for my work day. A good time management strategy will help you to accomplish what you want to accomplish in a day faster, and it will help you get more individual tasks completed daily. Here’s a list of some techniques to help you better utilize the time you have:

* Create a list of tasks to complete each day
Plan ahead and compile a list of things you want to get done every day. Throughout your day go through and consult your list, and check off tasks as you complete them.
* Put follow-up items on your list for the next day or two
If you have a task that you just can’t squeeze in today, go ahead and start an advance list and put it on tomorrow or the day after’s agenda.
* Bring forward unfinished work from the previous day
Items on your agenda that you haven’t completed can be added to the next day’s agenda and finish them then.
*Keep track of due dates
Use your list to keep track of when tasks need to be completed.
* Keep a list of monthly priorities
A list of things you need to do between one month and the next will be helpful in compiling your list of daily activities.
* Keep track of long-term commitments
Something so far in the future that it couldn’t be placed on your daily, tomorrow, or monthly list needs to be kept track of somehow as well.
* Keep your work area clean and organized
Lack of organization will lead to a lot of time wasted when you’re searching for something you need.
* Keep all your current work in a single area
Multitasking is a necessity, it happens. Make yours go smoother by keeping all your resources for your current projects in a single location.
* Get rid of old documents that you no longer need
Try to keep the amount of files you have on-hand to a bare minimum. Throw out the stuff from a few months ago that you will never need to reference again.

Not all of these strategies will work for everyone, but I think that if you give it some effort they can all have a positive impact on your work efficiency.

sources: Tom Mochal, Tech Republic

Tagged: small business, SMB, time management

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