I'm going to draw now on my military experience as we describe the types of meetings that you might conduct. So let's begin with the first type of meeting that I'm going to call a hasty meeting. This is the kind of meeting that you might call in a crisis situation. An emergency where you need to huddle quickly with key people on your staff or other key leaders in order to address a particular issue that requires immediate attention. Even these kinds of meetings requires some planning. You just don't walk in to these meetings without having that idea in mind. I call the planning that's necessary for a hasty meeting as addressing the 5 W's, who, what, where, when and why. You need to decide who needs to be present who are the key leaders in this crisis that need to be there to share the information or make decisions that you make in these kinds of meeting. What is the topic? Make sure that the topic is focused. If you diverge into nonimportant topics, you can reduce substantially the effectiveness of this meeting. You need to decide where it's going to be. Where do you conduct this meeting so that you can influence the action following the meeting the best way that you can? When is the meeting going to be held? When is it appropriate? How soon can you get the key players together to participate in this meeting? And then, of course, why are you conducting this meeting? Answering that question will help you provide the focus that you need to be extremely efficient in this particular kind of meeting. Our other kinds of meetings would be what I call deliberate meetings. These are all of the other kinds of meetings that you might conduct that don't fall into that category of the hasty meeting. All of these meetings require significant planning and preparation. In addition to the 5 W's, there are a variety of other topics that need to be considered In order to make these kinds of meetings most effective. And we'll devote some considerable attention to that in the next lesson. If you fail to devote the attention that it takes to conduct good meetings, then your meetings will result in confusion and frustration on the part of its participants.
