Tuesday | 14 October, 2008
Reader Q&A: Advice for Managing Business Meetings
In person or via teleconference, improve your decision-making processes in the meeting room.
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Reader Q&A: Advice for Managing Business Meetings 13 November, 2007 11:29:27
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Q: I have been in meetings where top managers push for their way while not meeting the project's needs. There is no senior leadership to squelch this behaviour. I try to push for centralized business objectives. Is this a good idea or do I risk offending my peers?
A: Identifying overarching objectives to use in evaluating the options is a good idea. However, you may find that in the heat of the meeting, there is little tolerance for rational decision making. You may want to get agreement about how decisions are made (including decision rights using RACI or a similar framework) and the decision process before working through the issue at hand.
Q: You mention the withholding of true opinions as an issue in meetings. How can a leader get others to voice their real thoughts in front of the group?
A:Understand that some people need time to process information before coming to a conclusion. If possible, schedule the discussion and decision-making meetings separately or distribute review material in advance. Consider assigning a devil's advocate to play the contrarian. It's a great role to assign to those who are quiet but see things in a different light. Make it easy for people by asking questions that make it safe for them to share their views (for example, "What are we missing?"). Give them time to respond. Finally, institute a cultural norm that "silence is concurrence" to encourage people to go on record, and "debate and unite" to reinforce the importance of active debate and united action.
Q: We hold meetings via teleconference. How can we improve our decision making?
A:Well-defined decision rights and processes are needed when working at a distance. Agree with the team on how decisions will be made. For complex decisions, a decision facilitator can ensure the right level of fact-finding and discussion using e-mail chains and blogs before a meeting. A Web conference tool can ensure discussions are moderated and differences resolved quickly.
Susan Cramm is founder and president of Valuedance, an executive coaching firm in San Clemente, California.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
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CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
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CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
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CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Cutting Through the Spin of Recent Vulnerability Disclosures 13 October, 2008 10:53:00
The FUD surrounding the ClickJacking and TCP/IP vulnerabilities has the world seemingly frozen in fear. But once you cut through the spin, the vulnerabilities aren't all that they were made out to be.There are a few highly publicised vulnerabilities at the moment which haven't completely been disclosed and which, it is claimed, could threaten the whole Internet as-we-know-it. Only, when the vulnerabilities are finally disclosed, it seems that the whole incident has been somewhat Chicken Little. - +
PCI app security: Who's guarding the data bank? 13 October, 2008 11:09:00
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Data-center security tools to not overlook 10 October, 2008 11:37:00
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Strange account management at Amazon 09 October, 2008 09:51:00
A careless login led to the discovery of some strange ccount management practices at one of the Internet's largest retailers.Via the RISKS mailing list comes an interesting tale of poor online account management at a major online retailer. According to Graham Bennett, accounts with Amazon display an odd behaviour that doesn't seem to have attracted much attention in the past.
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