While I often loathe meetings, I do realize and appreciate the importance. There are things that will not always be effectively accomplished over the phone, on a conference call, in a WebeEx, or with certain individuals not able to be present or involved.

The Value in having a “Meeting”

I think the real value of “the collective congregation of people in the effort of accomplishing business”, or simply defined as “a meeting”, is to make sure that those people don’t miss the opportunity to hear or speak on something critical.

The cartoon does illustrate the irony of the dinosaurs missing the boat. They missed out on continuing the existence of their  species! But it also reveals what the boat missed out on… the existence of their species!

Deliver Value, Bring Value, Share Value

So while you have meetings to disseminate information, do not disregard the more important value of allowing others to be involved to engage and share their own ideas of what will and won’t work!

Without the exchange of ideas we all have the potential for good ideas and works to become extinct!

I still get annoyed by some meetings

From the apple.com website

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Ohio HR conference which had a record of over 700 attendees.

I was also fortunate or less fortunate to perform the daunting task of delivering this presentation on Friday morning which began at 7:15am. Keep in mind that:

1. it was a 7:15 am session
2. the conference attendees had been there for 2 days
3. they probably came to the session from two nights of good times!
4. this was an early bird session on Friday
5. this was the final day of presentations
6. it competed against sessions on FMLA and I-9 (yeah me!)
7. can I stress that it was at 7:15 am

Despite the early morning there were probably around 150 people in the session if I estimate correctly. I think it was because of the Anthony Hamilton music I played. *shoulder shrug.* The topic of this was Building a Leadership Development Program from Scratch. Without further adieu here are the slides from that session. If you would like to have a downloaded version please subscribe to the blog and then contact me and I would be happy to send you the notes!

Now how do you approach and build your own Leadership and Training efforts?

The description from the program pamphlet: “Leadership is a concept that has been discussed for years. It has moved from being a simple term and ideology to active growth and building operational capability in the practices of individuals becoming leaders. Pressure to build leadership from front-line employees to the executive suite is on. However, the question remains “We need leaders but what should you think about when creating a program to develop them?

Sometimes a simple visual can help everyone gain perspective around what is fantasy and reality!