CEO to CEO

Part II: Where’s the Boss? Driving Results in a Meeting

Last week I ranted a bit about how CEOs shouldn’t listen to the “time-wasting” bad rap that meetings have, but instead should make their meetings powerful, where they leverage the collective wisdom and experience of their top teams. This week I’m enumerating specific techniques to make meetings produce real results.

Specific Techniques to make meetings “work”

The key to making meetings incredibly productive is having the CEO (or a powerful executive on the team) require all meeting participants to follow these rules:

1. Every participant must prepare before the meeting. If everyone has received and read the handouts, there is no need to read them together at the start of the meeting. Your most disciplined execs will do this, so please don’t punish them by making them sit through the same material again because an undisciplined executive didn’t—even if it’s you, the CEO.

Debates without Decisions

By Robert Sher

After a blissfully distracting weekend I walk into the conference room for our Monday 8am top team meeting. The view of the San Francisco Bay distracts my attention as I wait for the last VP to arrive. Ever eager and feisty, Marie starts talking about the product launch strategy with the four others, bringing up contentious points that I could have sworn we had debated twice before. I notice a barge pick up speed on the water, and my mind drifts to thinking about the 1993 movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, where he had to repeat the same day, over and over again. There was something he needed to learn before time would move forward again. I wondered what I needed to learn here to stop this re-debating problem, because it is maddening.

This topic, the fifth in the series, Debates without Decisions, will take you through some common issues and techniques to get just the right amount of analysis.

Connecting with your Team

By Robert Sher

In good times or bad, it’s easy for executives to lose the rhythm of communicating with their team. But without systematic and regular communication, you’re demoting yourself from leader to worker. Some chief executives wind up working so hard producing that there is little time to lead. Others withdraw because of mounting obstacles that make communication unpleasant, and with today’s technology (i.e. e-mail and working virtually) it’s easier than ever to “hide”.

But being on the same payroll and surviving annual performance reviews isn’t enough to make a powerhouse team that is fun to work with and delivers outstanding results year after year. One of the things that are essential for high levels of team performance is a great routine for regular communications. I’ll touch on six key areas.

The Executive Composer

By Robert Sher
Communication is like a musical composition, and the CEO is both the composer and one of the musicians. Random communication, in the absence of a composition is a huge contributor to poor business performance.

Back Away from the Keyboard...

Summary: E-mail is both a blessing and a curse. The article discusses common abuse/overuse of e-mail and highlights two-way communication alternatives that work much better in certain circumstances.

Communication Skills Count

Summary: After seeing a presentation at the Alliance of CEOs by Chuck Smith, CEO of SBC West, it became crystal clear how powerful great communication skills can be. The audience was engaged and entertained. Read some of the key speaking techniques he used and how they can make any CEO a better communicator.