After that exercise, we had a massive meeting with the entire executive staff. There are positives and negatives to large group meetings. The positive is that you can communicate to everyone at once any changes that need to be implemented. The negative is that everyone has an opinion on how something should be done. This leads to an enormous waste of time going back and forth. It also leads to confusion because once many ideas have been suggested; it is hard to tell what was finally decided on as the course of action.
Imagine a kitchen where you have more than one chef; each person is trying to cook his own dish, and only wants to make the dish the way he wants it to be. This would ensure that little to nothing would be accomplished. Hence, I label these situations “too many chefs in the kitchen.”
I am of the personal philosophy that meetings should be kept small and short. Generally, fewer than six people is good, and a half-hour meeting is usually more than enough.
Have a chairman for the meeting who can keep people on topic, and enforce the time limits. Come to the meeting with an agenda, and send that out ahead of time.
Meetings are good for sharing knowledge and getting people on board, but use them carefully.
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Swimming with Asian Sharks - Business Secrets from the Pacific Rim
Non-FictionEver wonder what it takes to do business in Asia? How do Asian business executives behave and think? Do you want to create a business from scratch in under 24 hours? If so, this is your guide. This book is a compilation of over one hundred business...
