Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher 092: Rob Simons - Have You Ever Had a ‘Good’ Meeting?
Meetings! They take up our time and nothing actionable ever gets done by the end of it. No one really likes meetings. However, good meetings can actually give you back time. How can you execute a good meeting so that everyone will feel happy and more productive by the end of it? This week’s guest shares how!
Rob Simons is a Certified Gazelles Coach, the Strategy Summit Facilitator and Accelerator Facilitator for Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and has over 25 years of experience as a brand expert, business coach, and entrepreneur!
Rob grew up during the beginning of the personal computer revolution. He started his first publishing firm at 23 and started his first branding firm at 25. A defining moment for him was going to an all-day workshop with Verne Harnish and that’s when he realized how much he didn’t know about how to run a business. Things really started to kick off from there. In 2011, Rob started coaching clients on a full-time basis.
One of the biggest mistakes Rob made was not getting an outside coach. He thought, “I’m a smart guy. I can figure it out.” Yet, even the best golfers in the world have a coach and running a business is no different.
When Rob was running his businesses, he hated meetings. He had a lot on his plate and the last thing he wanted to do was sit in a room for an hour. However, good, effective meetings on a regular basis set you free. One client told Rob that he was able to reduce his email by 60% just by having good meetings.
In our digital world, so many things get lost in translation via email. Don’t try to have important conversations via email. At best, have a video conference if you need to talk. 60-70% of language is non-verbal, so you have to be able to see your team to fully understand the meanings behind the words they say.
Believe it or not, having a daily huddle or a daily meeting can actually be very beneficial to you and the organization. However, so many clients hate doing the daily huddle. It sounds simple, but talking to each other every day and having good communication within the organization go hand-in-hand and the daily huddle helps bridge that.
After you’ve established good daily huddle habits, then what’s the point of having a weekly meeting? The weekly meeting is basically helping you close your books. It gives you a quick recap of what was done that week. Some people like to do this monthly, but truth be told, most people can’t remember what happened 3 weeks ago and things often, again, get lost in communication.
With any good meeting, you have to have an agenda, an outline, of what you’re going to talk about and you have to make sure you follow it! If you don’t have an agenda and you’re just winging it, then it’s never going to work.
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