Since the start of Google, they have always had worker esteem, comfort and productivity in mind. I have learned from many famous people on the internet that “Sucess Leaves Traces.” What does that mean?
That means that if you study the people who are wealthy and sucessful, you are bound to pick up a thing or two from them. If you read the famous book “Think And Grow Rich“, and if you haven’t you should, then you will know that Napoleon Hill studied all the wealthy people in his time and by studying them he become extremely wealthy. You should do the same!
So how can Google help you in a meeting? They have organized their meetings in a very strict way. Unlike most meetings these days which are “unstructured, uninspiring, and unproductive.” But they don’t have to be that way …
The idea is to a) Don’t Panic and b) “Don’t Politic, use data.” What exactly does that mean?
Google chooses designs on a clearly defined set of metrics and how well they perform against those metrics. Designs are chosen based on merit and evidence, not personal relationships.[The author] discourages using the phrase “I like” in design meetings, such as “I like the way the screen looks.” Instead, she encourages such comments as “The experimentation on the site shows that his design performed 10% better.” This works for Google, because it builds a culture driven by customer feedback data, not the internal politics that pervade so many of today’s corporations.
Many meetings I’ve had back in college went something like this: get there on time, boss complains about other useless employs and how the servers are slow, boss complains about the city, boss complains about his regular students, boss complains about all the “unqualified” job applications he’s getting … only till it was one hour later did I finally have a chance to give a quick weekly progress report and suggest some server change ideas. Meetings where the low of my week at work. From the article: “I can recall a Dilbert cartoon in which several people sat around a table while the meeting organizer said, “There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we’ll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us…” ”
The article on BusinessWeek, about How To Run A Meeting Like Google, offer 6 great Top Tips by Marissa Mayer the VP of Search Products at Google:
- Set A Firm Agenda
- Assign a note taker
- Carve out micro-meetings
- Hold office hours
- Discourage Politics, use data
- Stick to the clock
Truly great advice. By setting a firm agenda you make sure people focus on those topics and nothing more. Of course, be a bit flexible to allow for pressing issues to squeeze in. Using a note taker will help you keep track of what goes on and when! Nothing sucks more than ‘needing’ to remember what happened 14 days ago at the 10am meeting with the CEO and you didn’t take notes … so use a official note taker (who isn’t the presenter or you!) Not to mention, a all important rule of meeting: Stick to the clock! What’s more annoying than a bad employee? A good employee who doesn’t know when to stop.
Keep those in mind and you should be able to run better meetings.
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