Chris the Taxi Driver’s Pearl No. 1 – Effective Meetings

‘So what do you do?’ enquired my taxi driver this morning, as he drove me through the quiet Sydney streets.

My usual answer ‘time management specialist’ produced one of the most informative taxi rides I’ve ever had. Chris used to be the Chief Engineer for a very large provincial County Council in the South West of New South Wales. Family circumstances led them to Sydney, where he decided to take a career change and become a cabby.  (Have you ever noticed how many ex-executives make the same choice?)

I’ll share a few of his pearls of wisdom over the next few posts.

‘Meetings are a big time-waster, he said.  ‘I hardly had any meetings.’

‘I agree with you, but how did you manage that?’ I wanted to know.

‘Simple.  Each of my team had a whiteboard in their offices, where they listed their projects, priorities and deadlines. Because I was a ‘management by walking around’ kind of guy I would wander around every morning to check progress. A quick glance at the whiteboard gave me all the information I needed. If I disagreed with their priorities I might ask why they had made those choices, but because we were in regular communication that seldom happened.’

Even though many of us are dominant in other information processing styles (auditory tonal, auditory digital or kinaesthetic being the main ones) we can all access visual information very fast. So, Chris’s simple technique of having everyone’s priority list up on the wall saved hours of conversation and unnecessary meetings. Also, there were no nasty surprises with missed deadlines – he could see in a nano-second if things weren’t moving or deadlines were looming

What are your ways of saving meeting time? Or, your experiences with whiteboards as a means of communication?

Yours in finding pearls of wisdom from unlikely sources.