Why our teammates say, “No thanks”.

Dori Clark is a business professor and author. She talks about being strategic with our time and priorities. One of the points she makes is to say ‘no’ more to meetings where we don’t need to be, doing things you don’t need to do.

Our Cross-Functional Teammates are doing it, too!

They’re judging our invitation on several merits. Some things they consider:

• Was it value-added? Did people walk away from our exercise with better understanding?
• Were they respected and given a voice?
• Was their opinion considered, or was it just lip service (saying we wanted their input, but didn’t really want it)?
• What happened to the information – did it affect the design?

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Maximizing Meeting Value and Participation

• Our mindset: our teammates are our customers of our meeting
• Be prepared: information (scope and background), supplies, and a plan for co-work
• Own the meeting – facilitate and guide the team, make it easy for them
• Start on time – end on time or early
• Allow time for proper co-work session closure: teamwork stuff – action items, notes, meeting evaluation (if doing)
• Follow-up: show how the meeting results are tied to design inputs

Being consistent with the above will help the most.