Meeting Management: A Sniff Test for Project Success

  Leadership   Manufacturing   Talent Management   Knowledge Shelf  

Abstract
Project meetings are often the first exposure of the project manager to many team members and stakeholders. In fact, how the project manager handles this and subsequent meetings may provide insight into how the project will be managed. In many cases, the same strengths or weaknesses exhibited in conducting meetings will be pervasive throughout the project—so beware of meeting mismanagement.

Introduction
Meetings can be either the most painful of events or can run like a well-oiled machine and produce results. Planning and conducting a meeting takes skill. Witnessing how a project manager runs even the most fundamental of meetings can provide great insight into his or her project management style and may even be predictive of project success or failure. Therefore, the skills used in managing meetings may make or break a project manager’s reputation. Below are true project meeting mishaps that are seemingly innocent enough, but could spell trouble in the future and may be indicative of potential project failure.

Witness:
After calling the meeting to order, Sara, the project manager, turns the floor over to Joe to present his agenda topic. As the discussion ensues, Sara, ever the harried professional, disengages herself from the meeting and turns her attention instead to her laptop and commences banging out email responses to all of the flagged emails…

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