Before the Meeting

You're thinking about scheduling a meeting, but you don't know where to begin. Here are some tips to help you prepare before sending invitations for the big day:

1) CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES: unless a topic is important and pressing, avoid calling a meeting; perhaps an email message, telephone call, or an anouncement would serve the purpose as well.

2) INVITE THE RIGHT PEOPLE: to make decisions, invite those people who have information and authority to make the decision and implement it.

3) DISTRIBUTE AGENDA: prepare and distribute an agenda that includes the date and place of meeting, the start and end times, a brief description of each topic, the names of people responsible for any action, and a proposed time alloted for each topic.

***REMEMBER! The real expense is the loss of productivty of all the people attending the meeting.