Life in a factory: Meeting Skill

Meetings can be very productive. They can also be a waste of time. Here are some ways to improve your meeting management skill.

PAT approach meeting: A meeting has to have: a Purpose, an Agenda, and a Timeframe.

Set the PURPOSE of the meeting in 1 or 2 sentences at most. "This meeting is to review new product introduction for manufacturing" or "this meeting is to discuss the rootcause and corrective action of a customer complaint". That way everyone knows why they are there, what needs to be done, and how to know if they are successful.

Set an AGENDA. List the items you are going to review/discuss/inspect. I like to assign a time limit to each agenda item (see below) and identify the person responsible to speak or moderate the discussion.

Set a TIMEFRAME, at the very least set a start and end time. I also recommend setting a duration for each item in the agenda. These should total to the overall meeting timeframe.

Meetings need to start on time. Don't wait for stragglers to show up. When someone arrives late, don't go back and review what has already been covered. That just wastes the time of the people who showed up on time for the meeting. If the meeting organizer/sponsor doesn't show up on time, consider the meeting cancelled and go back to work. How long to wait for the organizer to show up varies among companies, but I wouldn't wait any longer than 5 minutes.

♦FHR♦