Meeting Agenda Success!

I had a wonderful first success utlizing the meeting agenda advice I got from Manager Tools! Everyone embraced the schedule, we were all mindful of our presenting time, all the topcis were covered, and the meeting ended early. Compete win across the board!

A bit more detail: I am part of a monthly project review meeting. Each memeber of our sales/design team presents the projects they are managing, new leads, and related information to their territories. These meetings were traditionally scheudled for just one hour, but nearly always ran over two. People would ramble over the same details repeatedly or we would go down long unrelated tangents. Using my knowledge of DISC, it was a meeting made up of High I's who loved to talk and share. 

I had no direct ability to officially change this. I was not running the meeting nor was my boss, but someone in a different department one level above me (Bob). So instead of role power, I had to use relationship power: Bob and I were work friends, due to a combination of personal causal chats and professional favors. I also knew he was a High I, rather than a S/C like me. I couldn't win him by arguing that HE should build a detailed agenda and hold everyone to it.

So I instead took the Manager Tool agenda template and adjusted it to fit fit the meeting. I took physical copies into the Bob's office and asked him if he had a minute; I had a proposal for him. Face-to-face, I was able to win him over in showing how much more efficient it would be, at no work or cost to him. I even volunteered to facilitate the meeting, managing the clock so we stayed on task. By presenting to his personality so strongly, I didn't even need to get through all of the sales pitch before I won his approval. 

In the meeting itself, I started with laying out the ground rules. Everyone bought it-in and were actually self-policing themselves and helping polic others. I did not need to push hard at all to keep us on track. 

This was probably the strongest applicaiton of Manager Tools teaching that I've ever done at work. I had to apply multiple different strageties I learned from the podcasts into a single effort .I am very excited to keep learning more and finding ways to apply it!