Monthly Archives: July 2013

#205 Call to action

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Meetings are not everyone’s favorite place. Very few meetings in the workplace are fun and productive. There are lots of books that teach how to make meetings useful. Some of them are very good, but most fail to make an impact because the readers tend to focus on the mechanics of meetings: setting the agenda, using a timer, and sending out minutes.

Try this simple rule when you organize your next meeting. Ask yourself, “What is my call to action?” Meaning, what do you want your audience to do? This could be asking them to stop doing something, do something differently, or start doing something.

This simple rule will ensure that you select the right audience, create a simple, focused, and defensible message, and most important, have people’s attention during the meeting.

If your audience is checking their email during a presentation, they most likely don’t need to be there. Don’t ask them to close their laptop, ask them to commit to a decision or take an action. Excuse the egregious offenders, tell them you’ll send them an email to keep them in the loop.

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#204 Wishful thinking

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Dreaming big is encouraged, plenty of authors have made money selling books encouraging their readers to think big. Reading such books is soothing, because they give hope. The ones that are well researched and well written are a joy to read.

These books feed a need for “knowledge transfer” and thus will always do well. Even if the content is known and has been covered in a different book. I encourage you to read the better ones, because we sometimes have to be told something more than once to “get it.”

Books will encourage action, but they can never monitor to see if you are actually doing it. You have to hire another human being to do that. It could be a friend, your boss, or a personal coach. Fear of nagging brings about action, till the day you get fed up, and fire your coach. Unless your coach fires you first. After all, your friend or your boss have only so much time and energy.

What you need is to find that spark within, the inner motivation that will propel you without you having to put in the effort. You can read about it, but those who find the spark will prosper. The “spark” will bridge the gap, and overcome the contradiction between desire and action. The bigger the gap, the more work you have ahead of you. Better get started!

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