Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The pre-meeting is one of the better techniques for holding a successful meeting.

Want to have a “good” meeting, i.e., one where the outcome is to my liking? Hold a pre-meeting. Meet before the meeting. Plan what you and yours will do and say in the meeting. Plan what you and yours won’t do and say in the meeting. Understand the focus. Stick to the topic. Resist any temptation to stray to other things.

In other words…

rehearse

One of the reasons those TED talks are so good is that they rehearse. They have a pre-talk before the talk. They pre-talk over and over and make the talk focused, to the topic, tight, with no straying.

Rehearsal works. Pre-meetings work.