Short description:

A best-seller in its first edition, Making Meetings Work Even Better: 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.

Long 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.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Part 1 Paradigm Shift
1 Principle Driven: the Seven Imperatives
Part 2 Managing Agenda Organization
2 Managing Agenda Organization
3 Managing Agenda Dieting: The Rule of the Agenda Bell
4 Managing Meeting Text: The Written Rules
5 Managing Participant Trust: The Integrity Rules
6 Managing Premeeting and Postmeeting Tasks
7 Managing Rehearsals, Performances, and Audiences
8 Managing Emotional Elements of Meetings
9 Managing the Flow of Ideas and Proposals: Dealing With Difficulties in Idea Processing
10 Managing Bases for Decisions in Meetings: The Decision and Choice
11 Managing Decision and Choice
12 Managing Positions and Roles in Meetings
13 Managing Tasks and Functions in Meetings
14 Managing Conflicting Values in Meetings
15 Managing the Evaluation Rules
Part 3 Becoming a Master Meeting Manager: Some Tips on Application
16 Becoming a Master Meeting Manager
17 Implementing Total Quality Meetings (TQM)
Part 4 Strategic Perspectives on Meetings
18 The Meeting: Lore and Legend
19 The Negative Culture of Meetings
20 But Whay Do Things Go Wrong?
21 Quality Management Equals Quality Decisions
Part 5 Leadership in Family Meeting and Civic/Community Meeting Decision Making
22 Family Group Decision Making and the Family Meeting
23 The Eclipse of Community and the Civic Meeting: From Bowling Alone to Meeting Alone
24 Crisis in Governance: Problems With Boards of Directors
25 Leadership in Community Decision Making: Ends and Means
Appendix A Writing Samples
Appendix B Sample Evaluatin Sheet
References
Index
Bibliography