You'll know how a company is when you have a meeting.

Meetings, this is a good way to solve problems, but nowadays it is spit out by everyone: going to work is not the most exhausting, the meeting is.
Cousin said that their company is a nightclub - always meeting at night, but the more the meeting can not solve the problem, the more problems can not be solved, the more the meeting, week after week, a vicious circle, so tired that he would like to resign.

As expected, we can tell how a company is like by seeing how it holds meetings.

Meetings, see the efficiency of the company

Inefficient meetings waste not only the participants' time, but also the company's money.

How much does it cost to hold a meeting? Not only is it visible to the participants of the meeting when the hourly rate, there are a lot of you can not see, such as attending the meeting of the travel, the time to prepare meeting materials, the cost of photocopying information, planning and organizing the meeting to spend the energy ...... These can be converted into money.

There is a formula for calculating conference costs circulating on the Internet:

Meeting cost = 3 times the average hourly wage x 2 times x the number of people in the meeting x meeting time (hours)

Every meeting you have costs the company money, and the higher the position of the attendees, the more the company pays.

The TED talk "Let the person who "steals" your time get out" has done statistics, more than 3 billion meetings are held each year, executives 40%-50% of the work time is spent in the meeting, nearly 34% of the meeting is ultimately a waste of time. If converted into US dollars, US business "loses nearly $37 billion annually due to wasted time in meetings".

In order to improve the efficiency of meetings, companies are trying to do everything they can.
I have been to the headquarters of Nissan Motor Company and participate in their meetings, their meeting rooms can only be booked online, the end of the meeting time is approaching, there will be a speaker to remind you to end the meeting as soon as possible, and so on time, you must withdraw from the meeting room, can not be delayed, because the next set of people to participate in the meeting has been waiting outside the door.

Time is money, and there is no exception in the matter of meetings.

Meeting, see the management level of the company

My friend told me about their company's meeting: "The meeting is quite good, anyway, is a large-scale dumping site, no problem when the people are all called together to sign the pledge, there is a problem when the people are called together to tear each other up, as long as the development of a meeting on the cell phone to sleep on the thick skin, with you casually say a couple of words, with you have nothing to do with you directly with the paycheck to touch the fish, and more hippie."

This kind of company is not a minority. You can tell a lot about a company's management from the way it meets.

Amazon founder Bezos says why:

More meetings and longer meetings in a company means that there are more things that need to be communicated and discussed. Why do so many things need to be discussed and communicated? Because the company's normal system processes can not be solved and have to be discussed, then there must be something wrong with the company's organization and processes.

Instead of making a big deal about how to hold a good meeting, it is better to actively improve the organizational function and try to keep the meeting communication at a minimum.

Another thing that can show how well a company is managed is meeting minutes. I've seen many companies with standardized management require that meeting minutes be written after the meeting, so that they can be implemented and followed up.

However, there are even better companies that never write minutes. They believe that the meeting everyone understands and confirms the conclusions of the meeting, after the meeting in accordance with the matters decided at the meeting to do on the line, why is there a need to write the minutes of the meeting?

What's more, writing minutes is a technical task that requires not only familiarity with the business, but also a high degree of ability to summarize and refine, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive.

A high degree of autonomy of the company, do not have to write minutes, everyone knows what they should do, according to the steps to do on the line.

Meeting style, see corporate culture

Every company has a different way of meeting, and even some have diametrically opposed meeting principles, which reflect different corporate cultures.

There are always a few companies do not take the unusual way, Amazon's meeting style is the opposite. In this era of no PPT no meeting, Amazon's meeting rules even have a "not allowed to use PPT".

Because Bezos believes that PPT is not a good meeting carrier, for the speaker, with PPT display is indeed very convenient, but PPT can only show part of the main points, and can not fully express his thoughts, it is easy to hide some of the points behind the content of the omission, the participants from which the information will be missing.

So Amazon's meeting was changed to: meeting organizers need to be all the information, in accordance with the standard 6-page template written in advance and sent to the participants. In the first 15 minutes of the meeting, everyone reads the 6 pages without saying a word, and then discusses them later.

The pattern of a company's meetings reveals what the company advocates and what it opposes. Its corporate culture is deeply imprinted in every meeting.

Meeting, see the boss pattern
From the meeting of this small matter, you can see the boss's pattern and character, we also have a lot of pattern around the boss.

Some companies do not meet during working hours, the routine operation is to squeeze the noon meal time to open a short meeting, the use of the evening after work time to open a small meeting, move the weekend break time to open a long meeting.

Some companies often meet before work, a meeting to 9 o'clock later, meal allowance transportation subsidies are not, not to mention overtime.

How far a company can go, the last spell or the boss's pattern, even the meeting of this small matter are catty, full of calculation, so the company will never grow.

Efficient meeting style
Can enhance the value of the meeting

Efficient companies have a lot in common in meeting management, and here I would like to introduce a meeting way that has been proven to be good after years of practice: the Nissan Meeting Way.

Many people have heard of the Nissan Production Way (NPW), which ensures that not a single second is wasted in the production field. However, a survey conducted more than ten years ago showed that more than 60% of Nissan employees said that Nissan's meetings were either inefficient, or the purpose of the meeting was unclear, or both.

So Nissan decided to make a change in the way it conducts meetings, using simple, clear structured discussions to help everyone get more out of shorter meetings, and in this way Nissan researched and developed the Nissan Meeting Approach, which has been utilized to this day.

The goal of the Nissan Meeting Style is: to increase the value of meetings. It has 5 guidelines:

1,Reduce paper waste
2, Reduce traveling
3,1 hour for 1 topic
4,Confirm meeting objectives at the beginning
5,Form minutes on the spot

1,Reduce paper waste

Some companies meet, will copy a lot of information, after the meeting of these materials will be useless, and the preparation of these materials itself to spend a lot of energy, which is a huge waste. In fact, you can use the projector and other electronic equipment to focus on the content of the meeting, no longer a waste of paper.

2, Reduce travel
In today's advancing IT technology, information communication between people has been a lot of new ways, such as teleconferencing, web conferencing, WeChat, QQ, etc., with the help of telephone, web conferencing, etc. not only saves travel time and travel costs, but also makes the meeting efficiency has been improved.

3,1 topic 1 hour
Physiologists believe that the best state of adult brain power can only remain 45 minutes, people in the physiological fatigue of the critical point is 1 hour, or not how students a class of 45 minutes, will get off the class to take a break, is the reason.

So in the arrangement of the meeting, the general meeting time to one hour is appropriate, large-scale report will not exceed two hours.

The flow of this one hour (60 minutes) meeting goes like this;

Step 1: Confirm meeting objectives (5 minutes)
The meeting objectives, agenda and time plan should be confirmed at the beginning of the meeting.

Step 2: Discussion (45 minutes)
Each person's speech control in 5 minutes, open to the point, straight to the point, put aside the polite long-winded, tightly around the theme, only to say the middle of the "bones" of the thing. In order to improve the efficiency of the discussion, can be developed before the meeting to comply with the meeting discipline (Ground Rule).

Step 3: Form a summary of the meeting on the spot (5 minutes)
Take a few minutes to summarize and confirm the results of the discussion.

Step 4: Adjourn the meeting (5 minutes)
In order not to disrupt the next time slot, end the meeting 5 minutes before it is time.

4, Open the meeting by confirming the objectives of the meeting

It is important to understand why the meeting is taking place and what the meeting is trying to accomplish. If the objective of the meeting is not clear, the meeting is a waste of everyone's time.

Nissan people have a meeting worthy of our study, they start the meeting, will be written on the whiteboard to discuss several issues and to decide matters, goals, and then start the discussion.

5,Forming minutes on the spot

Form minutes on the spot, that is, the conclusion of the meeting, the conclusion should be specific to what people, when to do what things, who to follow up, etc. (What, when, who ......)

These guidelines into the meeting of the pre-planning, you can ensure that the meeting is efficient, specifically, is to do the following 6 work:

(1) Setting meeting objectives
Define the objectives of the meeting, the background, and the matters to be decided.

(2) the development of the meeting agenda
In accordance with the principle of "1 topic 1 hour" to develop a detailed agenda and time allocation.

(3) Determine the roles and responsibilities of the participants.
Determine the meeting host, proposer, decision maker, etc., to avoid inviting unnecessary people.

4）Cost of the meeting
Calculate the cost of the meeting according to the principle of "total meeting cost = 3 times the average hourly wage x 2 times the number of participants x meeting time (hours)".

5) Meeting Tools/Methods
IT meeting (account number, password)

6）Meeting materials
Information that needs to be sent to participants to understand before the meeting.

Whether a meeting can be successful, kung fu before the meeting, the meeting is well planned, the results must not be bad.

Meeting, is the best test of the company's standards, may you find a respect for you, the pattern of the company, open every meeting is valuable; may you respect other people's time, initiated by the meeting are efficient and valuable.