Costco Connection (TM) April 2012 edition - with false edit

“Make the Most of Meetings” from Costo Connections April 2012

Well similar to actor/writer/hollywood celeb Jason Segel, I have always wanted to appear with the  Muppets.   We both got our wish, although his slightly more impressive than mine as the  leading role in the recent release of the new Muppet Movie.  But at least, as the time management trainer and speaker, I still made the cover….if you look close….sort of….in a way.

Yeah whatever…as my daughters would say.

Here’s the article though for “Make The Most Of Meetings” featuring Boring Meetings Suck (with the Muppets!)

A Viewpoint and Commentary by the Author of Boring Meetings Suck; Jon Petz

Have you missed the headline about “Magician at meeting” on the news networks in the past few days? It referred to the upcoming National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) leadership and training meeting that had plans to include a motivational guest speaker/magician to present “The Magic Of Change.”

Maybe you recall the General Services Administration’s (GSA) recent disclosure of a 2010 conference for federal employees. It carried an $830,000 price tag, billed to American taxpayers. This conference’s program featuring a magician as well as a comedian and mentalist has been the focus of a media frenzy and taxpayer outrage in the past month.

I’m thankful for the watchdogs who help our government be more fiscally responsible. I vote for smaller government. I vote for aggressive cost-cutting measures. I vote against lavish cocktail parties hosted at taxpayers’ expense. I also vote against ineffective meetings and abuse of productive time that gets lost due to poor focus and engagement. What suffers? Achieving meaningful results.

So where and when should that red flag be waved?

Here’s my viewpoint. Meetings are about creating, informing, recognizing, evaluating or deciding. To realize any of these, the organizers must know how to connect with participants in today’s fast-paced, high-distraction world. The best results stem from participants being actively engaged in the process. That means no attendees are typing away on their mobile devices as a presenter monotones through an array of poorly designed PowerPoint™ slides. 

It doesn’t matter how awesome a message may be, if it doesn’t engage its listeners, they won’t get it! And they certainly won’t take action because of it.

Maybe a magician, professional speaker, or polished emcee who knows how to engage participants is needed to bring a creative focus to a meeting’s objectives. Maybe the money spent because of that focus leads to an exponential return on investment. Contrast that with an organization’s director or executive leading the conversation. Do you see attendees slowly slump into PowerPoint prison? Can you count how many quickly disengage and quietly work on items unrelated to the meeting at hand?

“Connection, participation and implementation” versus “wasteful spending of taxpayer money, time and talent.” That’s the issue with the NOAA “magician meeting” controversy. But my viewpoint isn’t political; rather, it’s a concern about connecting participants so together they can drive action-oriented results.

Now, the vast majority of people might perceive the magician at the meeting to be clown like—a sideshow with no purpose beyond amusement and intrigue. And on many occasions, this might be the meeting’s objective. However, the NOAA planners did design objectives into the guest speakers’ role and content requested. These objectives appear to clearly align with the event’s strategy and innovative flair as indicated in a statement from NOAA’s publicly posted request for a speaker. It stated: “a unique model of translating magic and principles of the psychology of magic, magic tools, techniques and experiences into a method of teaching leadership.”

What were the strategically planned outcomes of these NOAA or GSA leadership meetings? What actions and/or new understandings are meant to be the result from this time together? Let me speculate: Presumably, NOAA’s strategy for this conference is to find innovative ways to help the struggling fishing families that Senator Brown (R-MA) is fighting for. Maybe an activity using an engagement tactic can spark a creative idea that fosters new insights and plans of action.

That’s highly possible. Why? Because humans learn and retain information through emotion and novelty that engage the brain and promote recall (along with visual, verbal and physical interaction). This isn’t my own view; I’m citing information from these neuroscience expert publications and brain scientists:

-          How The Brain Learns (Dr. David Sousa, Corwin Press, 2011 4^th edition)

-          Brain based learning: The New Paradigm of Teaching (Dr. Eric Jensen, Corwin Press, 2008)

In addition, speakers of all kinds use jokes, stories, anecdotes and analogies to give messages a meaning. Why not use a magic trick for the same purpose? How do any of these differ from each other anyway?

If all of these tactics are designed to engage listeners (which they are), then should every story, joke, anecdote or analogy be labeled “entertainment”? Should these tactics be shunned or blamed for wasteful spending in a meeting? What’s the benefit of having boring meetings anyway? They get us nowhere. In fact, they become the time wasters when people don’t get engaged. That’s when do-over meetings have to be scheduled; no results came out of the first one!

Meetings that are conducted effectively lead to productive results, and organizations implement those results for the betterment of the people they serve. Isn’t that the idea?

So answer this question: Which is the bigger waste of money:

(A)   A $12,000 meeting that gets results in the form of behavioral changes, innovations and/or solutions to problems.

(B)   A $10,000 meeting that has no effect in creating change.

Meeting (A) includes a guest speaker or trainer who’s focuses participants on the right issues in an entertaining, original way. That leads to creating a connection and providing a measurable result based on the strategic objectives of the meeting. 

Meeting (B) includes a familiar organizational leader or speaker who’s presenting material that participants have probably already heard in less-than-engaging manners. This meeting results in few behavior changes or even a less-than-successful implementation plan.

Costs for both meetings include the same meeting room, pots of coffee, mileage expense and afternoon cookie snack in line with government per diem meal allowances. But also consider the lost time that could have been spent researching solutions for fishing families instead of sitting in a meeting. 

Doesn’t this argue for spending 10% more to get results from a pro who knows how to use stories—even magic tricks—to focus the audience on the organization’s objectives?

It’s a small (additional) price to pay to replace boring meetings that suck the money out of an organization (and you know the ones I mean) with ones that rock.

**

Jon Petz is a professional keynote speaker and author of Boring Meetings Suck, Get More Out of Your Meetings, or Get OUT of More Meetings (Wiley & Sons 2011).  www.BoringMeetingsSuck.com

As a Keynote Speaker, I commonly have my intro read with from someone with a lack of energy, enthusiasm or even decent enunciation.  It’s tough to complain, as generally it’s the event chairman, senior executive who has hired me or someone that simply pulled the short straw and got stuck with the job.  It’s not their fault. This isn’t what they do. It’s what I do. 

The result, we disengage the audience before the professional speaker / “engagement expert” can hit the stage. Now, we are starting from a negative 10 engagement level as opposed to even a break even. 

Well not today!  I can proudly and happily say I had a great introduction down in Tampa recently. Not only a great intro, but a great speaker to put the audience into the passionately listening mode. The best part of it all? It wasn’t a hired hand or professional event emcee, it was the person who hired me. She was a senior exec running a major call center in the wireless industry and she was FANTASTIC on stage.  She had energy, conviction and passion. She shared the service metrics and numbers with ease and even had me (the outsider) listening intently and cheering as certain goals were met, exceeded and challenged to get even better.

Can I share with you the relief when I don’t have to take the first five minutes of a presentation and sell the audience back into listening!

The recent GSA and NOAA meetings needed her as their speaker.  (Yeah, the ones all the uproar are about in which they hired outside speakers and magicians to help tell their story to engage the participants.)  Professional commentary - here are my thoughts on the GSA and NOAA meetings with a magician)

So Doral from Tampa.  I thank you! 

• Thank you for being a client and meeting so many great people that understand the impact a little “7 of hearts” can have.
• Thank you for commanding the attention of the audience because of your skills. As opposed to many senior execs who are demanding of the attention due to their status or role.

Together we worked magic – and it was an awesome experience with the world’s leading wireless provider.  Hope to see you again!

If looking for a some quick SRD’s on great intro’s – then download the book, check it out at the libary or borrow a friends.

Always glad the content can be used for effective meeting training for organizations.

Book Review: Boring Meetings Suck

Continue to Bore No More!

Jon

Author & professional speaker

Recently, Meetings Magazine, Minnesota’s Hospitality Journal checked in for a podcast about some of the Suckification Reduction Devices the book references.  Here’s the Get MORE Out of Meetings podcast link: 

Meetings “can be vehicles for innovation, motivation and decision-making,” writes Jon Petz. “They can spark revolutions. They can save the world! All you have to do is not let them suck.”Editor Joel Schettler interviews the author about his book, Boring Meetings Suck: which offers readers tips on how not to let good meetings go bad.

Why risk another year of spending weekends and late work days doing the work you should have been doing all day?  Sick of endless meetings getting in the way? Then it’s time for some resolutions to take back your life and productivity.

1) I resolve to refrain from creating time-wasting meetings that have no focus. For my agenda, I will communicate a clear objective and desired outcome for every meeting I host.

2) I resolve to set a default meeting length that’s less than one hour. (Who wrote the rule that meetings have to be 30 or 60 minutes, anyway?) People tend to (needlessly) fill the hour when they have it available. Instead, schedule 15-minute meetings so you get in, get to the point, and get out fast.

3) I resolve to avoid holding meetings solely to review material. I reserve meeting time strictly to resolve issues, develop initiatives, and interact creatively. If a review is needed, I will have others send it to me rather than host or attend a meeting for that purpose.

4) I resolve to prepare privately before a meeting, not in front of the attendees. If I want people to invest their time in my meeting, I’d better invest my time preparing to lead it effectively.

5) I resolve to insist on “no meeting Fridays” (or Mondays if you prefer) to allow people to use these days to get things done for the week. No one wants to spend Sunday night doing catch-up on Friday work that missed due to an abundance of meetings.

6) I resolve to never fall for the “what’d I miss?” demise, knowing that reiterating what’s already been said wastes everyone’s time.

7) I resolve to use my phone or tablet productively while I’m in a meeting. (Truth is, if I’m engaged, I won’t even want to be on my phone. But if I’m subjected to useless babble that could have been emailed, I’m working on something else.)

8) I resolve to stop inviting people to meetings when they could have been informed of results via email. I won’t be influenced by the “over-invitation syndrome.”

9) I resolve to refrain from hosting or attending  “do-over” meetings because nothing came out of the first one.

10)   I resolve to find creative alternatives to conference calls as an instant answer to everything.

Bonus:  I resolve to stop suffering in silence and allowing these abuses to proliferate through our organization!

Hope you enjoy….and Happy New Year!

Jon

It certainly has been an interesting time in the past several months, from a New York Post interview to a mention from Readers Digest.   Here was a nice to the point article posted in Readers Digest with some nice tips and a brief mention and easy SRD from Boring Meetings Suck.

http://www.rd.com/money/the-right-way-to-run-a-meeting/

Thought I would share a behind the scenes look at the life of a professional keynote speaker…..enjoy.

New Outfit = $146; Standing O = priceless

I settled into my seat as the airplane door closed. The still-new polyester suit, dress shirt, tie and spiffy shoes finally losing their out-of-box wrinkles. It wasn’t the most comfortable suit and didn’t fit all that well, but I’d only paid $146 for it that morning, shirt, shoes, and tie included. Plus who would believe what happened because of it!

Let me step back a moment.

I had a week of city hops of keynotes mixed with magic shows with my last leg—Bentonville, Arkansas—a presentation for a fairly large international retailer. As you too have experienced, stuff happens, and when you’re depending on airlines, stuff also doesn’t happen. This evening waiting in Laguardia, the anxiety we feel when we don’t have time for delays set in as the gate agent started pulling out vouchers for hotel rooms. I groaned, “I have a 7:30 am sound check and an 8:30 am keynote tomorrow morning . . . I don’t think so.”

So I pulled out all of my politeness and asked the all-important question: “Where CAN you fly me to tonight?” I figured anything within a six-hour drive of Bentonville should work. I could get to St. Louis - Great. Off I ran to the gate while calling the rental car company. The clerk was happy to charge me the “frustrated-I’ll-take-anything-and-leave-your-car-in-another-city” rate. But no problem. Should arrive in Bentonville by 5:30 am.

Due to my recent multi events, I’d checked my bag with my clothes in it. Needless to say, my luggage wasn’t about to catch up with me. But I did have my speech necessities on board with me. (I did one thing right!) Then I started doing what most of us would do—prepare an opening joke about why I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. (Or maybe I could weave in a message around that.)

Somewhere in the 5 am hour as I drove into Bentonville, I passed a 24-hour retailer, a big one that basically owns this city. Coincidentally, the majority of my audience that morning work for that same retailer. Stop! Once inside the store, I quickly found the business attire section (yup, seriously, this retailer has one) and began shopping for clothes to wear at my presentation. I left that Mart not less than 40 minutes later with a brand new suit, a dress shirt, a tie (not a clip on) and dress shoes – all for the amazingly low price of $146.

But I wasn’t feeling comfortable about this. First, I felt self-conscious about the way I looked and didn’t want people to think I was a fake. Secondly, I felt hot, literally, and I hadn’t even started working the stage yet. (Polyester doesn’t breathe well, you know.) I deemed my outfit far from perfect, but baby, it was SHOWTIME.

Just a couple hours after leaving that Mart, I was on stage launching into my program, connecting with the audience, creating great SHOWTIME moments. But in the back of mind, an uneasy, scared feeling was stirring because of my perceived lack-luster outfit. “Do they know where it came from? If not, do I tell them? If I dare, will they be insulted, proud or disinterested? Will I be embarrassed, shunned? Will I lose my credibility? Will this thing fall to pieces before I even finish? I’d better not risk it.”

As I neared the end of my presentation, I repeated my message to Stop Meeting Expectations and Dare to Create Impact instead. In the next two-second two pause, my brain raced back to thoughts about my wardrobe. “Should I or shouldn’t I?” In a flash, I took the gamble and dove off into unchartered waters by asking, “How should your opening speaker look? Should I wear Brooks Brothers custom-made or an off-the-rack selection from a department store?”

I then said, “I wanted to feel how your customers feel and know what it’s like to walk in their shoes . . . for real. And that’s what I did—to not only meet your expectations but exceed them.” As I showed off my wardrobe, I explained that my whole outfit was purchased hours ago at their store for a mere $146. Before I could finish what I was saying, a few people stood up. Then they stood up in droves and cheered and screamed. I giggled in disbelief and stopped my talk right there.
How could I top that ending?

Sitting back in my airplane seat, I articulated my takeaway from this experience—that as professional speakers, we’re in the SHOWTIME business. So it doesn’t matter how we feel, look or think, the audience has expectations—and we’re there to TOP those expectations.

Sucess Magazine, Nov 2011

I must say I enjoy when I get emails of people and organizations putting to use some of their favorite suckification reduction devices from Boring Meetings Suck. So recently, I was emailed this agenda from my Alma Mater Ohio University. What I liked about it?
Well firstly, it was from the incredible Ohio University down in Athens, Ohio. Thanks to Little Professors book store in Athens for displaying the book in their window and thus, the professional development book club selecting it for their monthly read.

(You can see their agenda right here: How to write an agenda)

I also took notice of the:
- Start time
- Fact that phones were welcome
- Focus on the purpose of said meetings
And even the Image….Yawn…

Thanks Ohio University and professional development club.

Jon Petz, professional speaker and effective meetings expert.