Beyond Public Meetings


Book Description

This book is full of common sense approaches to community engagement. It presents a combination of practical experience and expert knowledge. It provides a user-friendly entree into 'why should we engage?,' 'how can we engage?' and 'when do we engage?' and shines a light on how we might do this in a more meaningful and sustainable way.




Making Meetings Work


Book Description

A best-seller in its first edition, Making Meetings Work: Achieving High Quality Group Decisions, Second Edition covers everything you need to know about organizing engaging meetings, including preparing agendas, controlling what happens behind the scenes prior to and after meetings, and managing conflicting values and personalities. Through the Meeting Masters Research Project at the University of Michigan, author John E. Tropman observed and interviewed the nation′s most successful meeting experts to find out how to make meetings both stimulating and productive. Based on his findings, Tropman formulated seven principles and fourteen commandments for implementing dynamic meetings. This second edition has been extensively revised and expanded to include Family meetings and family group decision making Problems and solutions for board of directors meetings Community and civic meetings Volunteers and meetings Leadership in community decision making Making Meetings Work: Achieving High Quality Group Decisions, Second Edition provides simple, easily applied best practices for supervising or instigating meetings with decision accomplishment outcomes. Author John E. Tropman reveals goal oriented procedures that keep proposals moving towards quality group decision making and assure other participants look forward to attending your meetings. Written with humor and a deep understanding of the realities of business and political life, Making Meetings Work: Achieving High Quality Group Decisions, Second Edition is an extraordinary resource for anyone who leads, facilitates, or attends meetings.




Architecting Collaboration


Book Description

Are you a collaboration architect without even knowing? When you think of yourself as a collaboration architect, you can start to apply a range of methods, digital tools, and facilitation techniques to accomplish your goals. This book is made from a compilation of my +50 LinkedIn articles about meetings, workshops, group facilitation, and my invented notion of a 'collaboration architect'. In fact, you do not really need to purchase it because all its content is published and freely available online on LinkedIn and in my blog. Every successful product is the fruit of hard work, and this also applies to books. Yet, in this case, all the work is already done and nothing is left undone, as Lao Tzu once said. I have collected and curated the articles that I consider valuable, regardless of the time of publication and organized a chapter structure under several sections that you might find useful to your purpose as a reader. As an IAF (TM) Certified Professional Facilitator, I am aware that every meeting we design is a touch point for anyone to experience an engaging moment in their lives with a tangible outcome that you can measure. The same goes when writing about the professional and organizational roles of a collaboration architect. Yet, this one is not a book about group facilitation, and you should be warned about this from the start. However, you may find some examples of the IAF core competencies reflected in this collection of articles. For this reason, I decided to map the IAF Competencies in the chapters' content as way to provide some sort of guidance to you as a reader, and better decide which ones to read and which to skip. As always happens in any facilitated process, as a participant you are in charge. I do hope you enjoy reading my articles organized in this collection as a book that is yours to keep.




Beyond Planar Graphs


Book Description

This book is the first general and extensive review on the algorithmics and mathematical results of beyond planar graphs. Most real-world data sets are relational and can be modelled as graphs consisting of vertices and edges. Planar graphs are fundamental for both graph theory and graph algorithms and are extensively studied. Structural properties and fundamental algorithms for planar graphs have been discovered. However, most real-world graphs, such as social networks and biological networks, are non-planar. To analyze and visualize such real-world networks, it is necessary to solve fundamental mathematical and algorithmic research questions on sparse non-planar graphs, called beyond planar graphs.This book is based on the National Institute of Informatics (NII) Shonan Meeting on algorithmics on beyond planar graphs held in Japan in November, 2016. The book consists of 13 chapters that represent recent advances in various areas of beyond planar graph research. The main aims and objectives of this book include 1) to timely provide a state-of-the-art survey and a bibliography on beyond planar graphs; 2) to set the research agenda on beyond planar graphs by identifying fundamental research questions and new research directions; and 3) to foster cross-disciplinary research collaboration between computer science (graph drawing and computational geometry) and mathematics (graph theory and combinatorics). New algorithms for beyond planar graphs will be in high demand by practitioners in various application domains to solve complex visualization problems. This book therefore will be a valuable resource for researchers in graph theory, algorithms, and theoretical computer science, and will stimulate further deep scientific investigations into many areas of beyond planar graphs.




Make Virtual Meetings Matter


Book Description

Meetings should matter. Even and especially when those meetings are taking place online. No one wants to be called in for a meeting that could've been an email. No one wants to sit in a meeting where everyone's distracted by whatever else is happening on their screen, everyone is lost in the weeds, or people continue talking over each other. If you're going to attend or lead a meeting, don't you want it to...well, matter? An update to the original "Make Meetings Matter", this work is tailor made to help consumers get the most from every meeting — virtually! Meetings are a chance to initiate a conversation with your teammates. Not simply check a box on an agenda. You can foster new relationships with your coworkers, and learn from their new ideas and perspectives. So why do so many people dread meetings? Because they're doing them all wrong. Change the way people think about meetings. Transform their opinions by holding a meeting that is efficient and productive, that is open and communicative, that is useful and important. Paul Axtell affirms the importance of meetings, and he redesigns them using the vital foundation of conversation. With real—life examples and actionable advice, he shows you how to design meetings for results, lead them to achieve agendas that move projects forward, and even allow time for building the relationships that make working together in a remarkable way possible. Based on his award winning efficiency training title "Make Meetings Matter" and updated for the virtual meeting experience, this book will revolutionize the meeting—moving it from that dreaded obligation to a powerful way to get things done in business and in life.




Meetings That Get Results


Book Description

This practical, comprehensive guide to designing and running more effective meetings will result in less time wasted, more collaborative decision-making, and measurably improved business outcomes. There's nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting—except when it leads to another unproductive meeting. Yet every day millions of people conduct meetings—in person or online—without the critical understanding or formal training on how to plan and lead them effectively. This book offers a structured method to ensure that meetings will produce clear and actionable results. Meetings that are profitable and productive ultimately lead to fewer meetings. This book offers leaders a significant edge by • Empowering readers to help their groups create, innovate, and break through the barriers of miscommunication, politics, and intolerance • Making it easier for them to help others forge consensus and shared understanding • Providing them with proven agenda steps, tools, and detailed procedures Readers will learn how to resolve or manage common problems, inspire creativity, and transfer ownership to their meeting participants while managing interpersonal conflicts and other disruptions that arise. In a world of back-to-back meetings, this book explains the how-to details behind game-changing tools and techniques.




Online Meetings that Matter


Book Description

As an increasing number of organisations enable their employees to work from anywhere and as the number of distributed companies grows, online meetings are part of business as usual. While the trend in the office space has been to cut down on meetings to increase productivity, remote teams can benefit from a healthy meeting rhythm. During online meetings we can celebrate our humanity and spontaneity - and we can iron out those misunderstandings that creep in when our communication is restricted to the written word. ONLINE MEETINGS THAT MATTER is a guide for managers of remote teams and those introducing online collaborations practices. With a focus on strengthening the relationships between team members and using technology to support your team’s work, this book covers a range of ways in which members of remote teams can gather in the online space, as well as how individuals can prepare to make the most out of their valuable time together. This is a practical book that will help managers and their teams reconsider not just how they run their meetings, but their whole approach to online collaboration. Drawing on the wealth of many years of experience in the remote space, Pilar Orti, the founder of Virtual Not Distant, distills her knowledge of running online meetings and coaching managers to do the same, in this actionable and straightforward guide. Still wondering if this book is for you? This book is for you if you are the manager or leader of a non-colocated team, where working schedules overlap for several hours, ideally by no less than four. You might be making the transition to flexible working or ‘agile working’, and finding that your usual meeting schedule and formats are no longer possible, because you cannot gather everyone together in the same room. You might be worried also about people’s work becoming misaligned, losing team spirit, and people feeling disconnected from the work, the organisation and from one another – so you’ve moved some of your team meetings online. You might be a new manager, getting ready for your first online team meeting; you might be an aspiring manager, discovering what your job might entail. Or maybe you are a team member who understands the potential of online meetings, and wants to make sure your team makes the most out of them. You might even be a meeting facilitator or a coach, looking for ways to help teams and managers take ownership of their online meetings. And if you are someone who organises meetings for online communities, you will find aspects of this book relevant too. Finally, this book is for you if your team both needs and wants to gather together online. Some teams are happy to communicate on a one-to-one basis or through text, but if you think gathering together online as a team will help you to advance the work and create collaborative relationships, this book is for you.




The Surprising Science of Meetings


Book Description

No organization made up of human beings is immune from the all-too-common meeting gripes: those that fail to engage, those that inadvertently encourage participants to tune out, and those that blatantly disregard participants' time. In The Surprising Science of Meetings, Steven G. Rogelberg draws from extensive research, analytics and data mining, and survey interviews to share the proven techniques that help managers and employees change the way they run meetings and upgrade the quality of their working hours.




Meet Like You Mean It


Book Description

Web meetings and online collaboration don't have to mean laying low and answering email, but they too often do. Learn the best practices of people who use WebEx, Lync and other webmeeting tools to lead remote teams, manage projects and get work done. In this book, you'll learn: Why people hate webmeetings What the tools can-and can't-do, along with best practices and tips for engagement and productivity Create an agenda that massively improves participation and gets quality input 4 meeting techniques for teams




Make Meetings Matter


Book Description

Meetings should matter. No one wants to be called in for a meeting that could've been an email. No one wants to sit in a meeting where everyone's distracted or talking over each other. If you're going to attend or lead a meeting, don't you want it to...well, matter? Meetings are a chance to initiate a conversation with your teammates. You can communicate information with them that wouldn't have the same hold digitally. You can foster new relationships with your coworkers, and learn from their new ideas and perspectives. So why do so many people dread meetings? Because they're doing them all wrong. Change the way people think about meetings. Transform their opinions by holding a meeting that is efficient and productive, that is open and communicative, that is useful and important. Revolutionize the definition of a meeting. Learn to make them matter. Paul Axtell affirms the importance of meetings, and he redesigns them using the vital foundation of conversation. With real-life examples and actionable advice, he shows you how to design meetings for results, lead them to achieve agendas that move projects forward, and even allow time for building the relationships that make working together in a remarkable way possible. Based on his award winning efficiency training, this book will revolutionize the meeting—moving it from that dreaded obligation to a powerful way to get things done in business and in life.