- Feature Article: What's on Your Meeting Agenda?

- Note from the Author: Start Your New Year off on the Right Foot

- Special Message: Blast through Your Obstacles to Achieve Success!

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Start Your New Year off on the Right Foot

As we welcome the new year, it's time to take stock of what will motivate us to move forward. If you're like many people, you're probably either making a list of bold resolutions or quietly thinking of things to improve. Either way, before getting too carried away with heady promises to yourself, why not ask:

• Am I pursuing the right goals? For example, many people equate wealth with financial success, so they set goals aimed at reaching certain financial targets. Consider, however, that another powerful form of wealth involves increasing the value of what we offer to others. As we continually expand our product and service value, financial success takes care of itself. As a great example, an extraordinary healthcare practitioner in my community finally raised his fees this week. Why? His own patients insisted that he charge more for his invaluable services!
  
  
• Am I setting the bar too high? When we seek goals that are so challenging, there is only a small chance of achieving them, it's easy to lose steam. Instead, try the "stealth approach." Set the bar fairly low, and each time you achieve a goal, set a new one and let the momentum carry you forward. Just as in the game of football, every yard you gain boosts the total score.
  
  
• Am I honoring the right time frame? Our society tends to connect success only with goals and results that we can attain in the future. With this frame of mind, we can actually prevent ourselves from appreciating what exists in the present. In contrast, consider that wealth lives in the moment. In fact, the ability to appreciate a current situation (instead of perpetually waiting for a future one) is itself a kind of wealth!

As you ponder the possibilities for success in 2007, you will probably be meeting with many people to manifest your new goals. Meetings present their own challenges; however, you can be highly successful when you use the right tools and techniques. So, I hope you enjoy today's feature article, "What's on Your Meeting Agenda?" I will look forward to hearing your experiences with using these timeless tips!

Adele Sommers, author of the "Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" success program

P.S. If you missed any previous issue, visit the newsletter index!

Blast through Your Obstacles to Achieve Success!

Speaking of goals, I just visited a very interesting Web site called MyGoals.com. It helps you 1) set goals for yourself, 2) figure out the obstacles that might stand in your way, and then 3) identify and carry out the actions required to reach your goal.

What is an obstacle? Obstacles are fears, events, people, circumstances, and so on, that could affect your ability to attain your objectives. So before you commit to that list of New Year's resolutions, you may want to identify the potential barriers that could block your path.

After you brainstorm the obstacles, MyGoals.com helps you list the high-level and intermediate tasks that you would perform to overcome the obstacles and achieve your goals. MyGoals will even send you automatic e-mail reminders about when to complete your tasks, so that you'll have no worries about forgetting them.

On the site, you can choose from a number of "canned" (predefined) lists of goals, obstacles, and tasks on many different subjects, or you can develop your own. To see a list of common obstacles and tasks for starting a business, follow this link.

What's on Your Meeting Agenda?
by Adele Sommers

Conducting great meetings depends on several activities that occur before, during, and after each event. To help you establish the conditions for success and attain the very best results, this article lists essential tips on using meeting notices, agendas, and summaries.

Use Meeting Notices to Alert Your Attendees

Meeting notices act as an "early warning system" for your participants. You should use them regularly and give recipients plenty of lead time -- for example, at least a week. Avoid surprising people with a last-minute summons that disrupts their entire day. Below are some useful guidelines:

	Be sure your meeting notice includes all key information: 1) Meeting date 2) Starting and ending times 3) Purpose and objectives 4) List of participants 5) Location with directions or access instructions, and 6) Proposed agenda That way, everyone will know exactly what to expect, what to do, what their time commitment is, and what's in it for them! Request that people notify you well in advance if they will be unable to attend.
	If using a Web or telephone conferencing system, be sure to provide access instructions in your meeting notice, and any rules or protocols people should observe when logging or calling in to the conference. For example, if needed, indicate the meeting time by time zone (use timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html for conversions), the call in number, and access code. Explain remote meeting protocols, such as announcing oneself initially, and stating one’s name before making a comment.
	Send out a reminder the day before the meeting.

Do All Meetings Need an Agenda?

You may be wondering whether an agenda is absolutely necessary. The answer is, it depends!

An agenda provides structure; however:

• the fewer the people involved
• the fewer the topics you'll have to discuss
• the longer the time you have available, and
• the lower your expectations are...

...the less you'll need structure to get something done. If, say, you're just going out for a long lunch with a few people to toss around some ideas on a single topic, and you have no real expectations for what you need to accomplish, then you probably don't need an agenda.

Conversely, if you:

• involve more people
• to discuss more subjects
• in a compressed time frame
• with some very specific expectations for the outcome...

...then an agenda is an indispensable tool to help people focus on achieving the desired results. Agendas not only prepare attendees for what to expect, they also keep the meeting focused, and make the summarizing aspects much easier.

A sample meeting notice and agenda appear below:

So, What about the Meeting Summary?

The agenda and summary are the two anchor points for the whole meeting process. They represent the beginning (here’s what we aim to do) and the end (here’s what we did do).

To create a summary, you simply go down the agenda topics, record the key points, decisions, and action items, and voila! You have a summary. It’s really not that hard, but it does take a little time and discipline.

The summary helps ensure that the valuable time people spend in meetings will not be wasted, as the recorded ideas can proceed to drive future actions and decisions.

A sample meeting summary, with action item reminders, appears below:

In conclusion, meeting notices, agendas, and summaries encourage participants to contribute in an enthusiastic and meaningful way. They provide a robust structure that can compensate for any other aspects of meetings that are less than perfect.

Copyright 2007 Adele Sommers

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More information on meetings:

For related articles, see: https://learnshareprosper.com/articles.html#meetings.
For no-cost tools, see: https://learnshareprosper.com/products.html#meetings.

To Meet or Not to Meet?

Would you like to transform meetings from "profit stealers" to "profit boosters"? Why not make it your goal to eliminate those dysfunctional meetings, once and for all -- even if you're not the person running them!

You can do it with my “how-to” tools for making meetings hum and participants sing on key. No more sharps or flats to worry about with my Meeting Success Kit by your side.

The recently expanded second edition delivers seven powerful step-by-step checklists; "guerrilla techniques" for diplomatically handling meeting challenges from the sidelines; in-depth case studies that can help you erase meeting headaches forever; and 62 minutes of MP3 audio with a complete transcript.

Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the author of "Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" -- an award-winning Special Report and Workbook program.

If you liked today's issue, you'll love this down-to-earth overview of how 12 potent business-boosting strategies can reenergize the morale and productivity of your enterprise, tame unruly projects, and attract loyal, satisfied customers. It's accompanied by a step-by-step workbook designed to help you easily create your own success action plan. Browse the table of contents and reader reviews on the description page.

Adele also offers no-cost articles and resources to help small businesses and large organizations accelerate productivity and increase profitability. Learn more at LearnShareProsper.com.

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