Meeting Functions

Why do we need to actually hold meetings.

Well there can be a huge number of reasons to hold hold a meeting and whether it’s a group of people or just two one of those might be in negotiation.

We’ve talked about that but maybe for example two groups from two different companies might get together to negotiate some very large deal for example and they might discuss terms they might try to compromise or they might decide that they can’t come to an agreement and then they at least know why.

Because they had the meeting.

Maybe it’s a brainstorming meeting.

These are in my opinion the most fun.

Brainstorming is when everybody is giving ideas often to solve a problem or to come up with something new that people haven’t thought of before.

Maybe in a company for example.

So let’s say there’s a problem with one product in this company and that’s what they sell.

One of the things they sell and it’s not working it’s not they’re not selling a lot of that.

They’re trying to figure out why.

So they get everybody together.

Maybe the people who are responsible for making strategic decisions strategic is the adjective strategy means planning and making decisions about what what can help the company or what can accomplish goals.

OK so basically everyone’s throwing out ideas when we brainstorm.

There’s a storm going on in your brain.

We’re not usually focused on coming to an agreement about which one we’re going to do maybe but the general idea is you say what you think.

Then you say then you say and then you say and I’ll write it down on the whiteboard and we’ll get all the ideas down or on the board and then we can discuss them and decide which one is best.

But first let’s brainstorm and it can be a lot of fun.

And often if you have five or six people in a room together brainstorming that can be really really fun really interesting.

Another reason you might have a meeting is to discuss policy changes now policies are rules within usually an organization or a company and sometimes policy needs to be changed based on something that happened.

So let’s say there is a new law in the country that this company is in or the state or whatever.

And so because of that law the company then needs to make a change.

Well they will have a meeting to discuss how the company’s rules will change based on that change in the law or perhaps there is a problem that’s come up recently could be related to company culture and how employees interact with each other.

Or maybe it’s related to payment whatever.

Maybe some changes need to happen.

These are policy changes and the management staff staff is a group of people by the way.

It’s not each person you’re not a staff usually you’re a staff member.

Each person is a staff member.

So the management staff might get together and discuss what policies might need to change in order to resolve the problem or adjust or whatever needs to happen.

Something needs to change in the rules of the company.

So policy changes so the management staff or the sometimes senior staff may get together to decide what policy changes to make or perhaps if they’ve already decided how to implement how to implement those changes.

If we implement something that means we put it into place we put it into action.

This is the plan.

Okay great.

We have a plan.

Now let’s talk about how we implement the plan or how we actually make it real.

How we actually put it into place into place put it into place.

Now similar to a brainstorming meeting we might have a problem problem solving meeting.

This could be a little bit different than brainstorming.

We know exactly what the problem is.

And we’re trying to find solutions.

Maybe there are only two options so we’re not really brainstorming about what to do but we’re trying to decide maybe which option is best A or B and maybe we’re weighing the pros and cons and having a discussion about what are the pros more or the cons more we could say for example the the pros outweigh the cons or we could say the cons outweigh outweigh the pros.

It goes either way.

So in order to figure out whether A is better than B or B is better than a we’ll get together and talk about which one is going to be the best in the long term.

So if we’re talking about long term or short term we’re talking about immediate benefits or benefits down the road.

In the far future down we sometimes say down the road.

Well I think that I think that a is a good choice but it really only solves the immediate problem.

I think B will be better down the road.

I think B will be better in the long term.

The last one I want to mention is alignment.

Now this one might just be for each department in a company each department or maybe each department head to update everyone else about what’s going on in their department.

This is just to make sure that everybody is on the same page on the same page.

We often use this expression.

We need to make sure we’re all on the same page so that decisions I make don’t negatively affect decisions you make so that we can all make the right decisions so that we can move in a direction altogether so that we can have alignment alignment means we are in the same sort of direction all going together right.

I can also say to keep someone in the loop to keep someone in the loop means that they know what’s going on.

If one person is going to leave for a week and won’t be able to maybe take part in any of the meetings he might say to his or she might say to her colleague please keep me in the loop.

That means give me updates let me know what’s going on.

So maybe once a week there is an alignment meeting an alignment meeting in which everybody just talks about what’s going on so that nobody is out of alignment.

Nobody is out of the loop which is a very common phrase as well.

All right now we’re going to go on and we’re going to actually talk about a proposal and how we can make a proposal in a meeting situation.