The IT myths we still believe

Reported by TechRepublic, a survey by HighSpeedInternet.com found that computer users in the USA hold onto some outdated ideas about technology, including that Apple computers and iPhones don't get viruses (false), that cameras with higher megapixels take better pictures (false), that leaving your phone on charge overnight will kill the battery (false), and that PCs need to be turned off each night (false). People also thought that X-ray scans at the airport could wipe their HDD data (also false). Funnily enough, while I knew that a powerful magnet could damage credit cards, and high intensity X-rays could fog film, I had never heard that X-rays could affect digital data (which, of course, it can't).

However, another myth which the survey by HighSpeedInternet.com found was that users believed older models of smartphones are throttled back when newer models were released. This finding intrigued me as it was reported as false, yet was found to be actual anti-competitive practices by the Italian judiciary in 2018, against Samsung and Apple (Gibbs, 24 October 2018). So 'the people' are actually right in this instance, and the surveyors are incorrect. Not all popular beliefs are incorrect, and the evidence was there to prove it in this case.

So: don't worry about leaving your phone on the charge pad. Leave your PC on at night if you are in the midst of doing something and aren't worried about the power consumption. Check the camera specs, lens quality and reviews rather rely on megapixels for image values, and if you are an Apple user, ensure you set up and regularly review your antivirus and malware systems.

And don't worry about airport X-ray machines.


Sam

References:

• Gibbs, S. (24 October 2018). Apple and Samsung fined for deliberately slowing down phones. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/24/apple-samsung-fined-for-slowing-down-phones
• TechRepublic (11 January 2018). The 6 biggest tech myths Americans still believe. Retrieved from https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-6-biggest-tech-myths-americans-still-believe/?ftag=TREe01923b&bhid=40778246

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Galaxy Note 9 MMS Error

As a happy owner of a Samsung Galaxy Note 9, I have not had too many problems with the phone. It certainly seems a lot less buggy than its predecessor, the Note 4. However, recently I had an interesting bug within my texting service.

A friend had sent me a multimedia message - an image, as it turned out - which simply would not download. Each time I hovered over the MMS part of the message, I got an error which read "Failed to download attachment from multimedia message. Try again later".

We tried sending the message several times. No luck. I could find no settings which prohibited the reception of MMS.

After some minutes of futile poking, I trotted off to Google, and did a search for "mms not coming through samsung Galaxy note 9, "Failed to download attachment from multimedia message. Try again later".

Oh, such an easy, easy answer: turn the flaming phone off, then on again. Apparently the text service had - for reasons known only to the ether - got disconnected. A reboot worked its usual magic.

Note to self: apply the simplest fix first!!


Sam

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Ten Questions to Circumvent Over-Thinking

Ruminating too much on things can catch us all at times, usually when we are feeling vulnerability due to a change of some sort. To compensate we can over-plan: focusing too much on details, trying to control too many uncontrollable elements, or attempting to factor for all emergencies.

We forget about allowing for likely risk factors, and we can also dwell on the risks until they assume too much significance. The risks get so close in our line of vision that we can't see that the likelihood is infinitesimally small.

Worse, once we are in this kind of space, it can be difficult to get out of it. We have to recognise that we are in this space, then take steps to get ourselves out of it. So, if we think we might be ruminating too much, we can try some of the following techniques and see if they make us feel differently.

We can:

1. Ask: what good things will happen to me today? Start the day positively and get up in plenty of time. Don't watch the news, but read or listen to something uplifting on our commute. Start with some exercise and the endorphins can give us a lift right from the get-go.
2. Ask ourselves the magic question: will this matter in five minutes? In five days? In five months? In five years? Usually it won't matter in five days, so we can let it go a bit now, and step back from it.
3. Ask: how important is this? Set priorities for decisions. For low priorities, set a five minute timer to make the decision, or learn and practice a new decision-making technique and use it when making these minor decisions. Higher priority decisions will make time. Plan the process and diarise a few blocks of 15 minutes to take the time to think about it before the deadline. Put actions into each of the blocks so you know you are taking actual steps towards completion.
4. Ask ourselves: are we trying to make this perfect? If so, we know perfection is impossible, unrealistic and stressful. "Done" is better than perfect (after Mewburn, 2012).
5. Ask: what are we afraid of? This is an interesting question. Sometimes we can be afraid if something won't work out; sometimes we can be afraid if it does work out. We can be afraid of our own history, or of our uncertain future. Trying to remain present and enjoy the now will help us to put fear aside, but first we need to identify where fear is getting hold of us.
6. Ask: what can go wrong? We can set a timer and have a free-for-all listing all the things that could go wrong. Then when the timer stops, screw the paper up into a tight ball, and throw it away. A friend of mine gives what he calls the "Meh, meh, meh" voice time every morning from 8.00 to 8.05 to whine as much as it likes. Then it has to shut up for the rest of the day.
7. Ask: is it time for a break? Sometimes we throw too much time at one thing, or stare at the same problem in the same way for too long. Removing ourselves from a problem can sometimes make us see it in a new light.
8. Ask: who could solve this? Sometimes simply talking - or even imagining talking - to someone else can change our perspective, and we can see a solution that was not visible before.
9. Ask: do I have too much data? Sometimes in an effort to gather all the information which may be useful we overload ourselves and induce "analysis paralysis". We could choose our top ten inputs and see how much of a decision we could make with just those.
10. Ask: what good things happened to me today? I write a daily journal and work out what went well as well as what can be improved. Cataloguing the good things really ends the day on a good note.

Some of those questions may get us moving. However, if we are feeling really stuck, we should talk to a counsellor. Sometimes we can't do it alone: we need a professional to help us to move forward.


Sam

References:

• Boyes, A. (13 July 2015). Make anxiety work for you: How to use 'overthinking to your advantage. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/11731837/Make-anxiety-work-for-you-How-to-use-overthinking-to-your-advantage.html
• Daskal, L. (4 January 2016). 10 Simple Ways You Can Stop Yourself From Overthinking: Here are 10 simple ideas to help overthinkers stop spinning their wheels. Retrieved from https://www.inc.com/lolly-daskal/10-simple-ways-you-can-stop-yourself-from-overthinking.html
• Edberg, H. (9 August 2017). How to Stop Overthinking Everything: 12 Simple Habits. Retrieved from https://www.positivityblog.com/how-to-stop-overthinking/
• Mewburn, I. (2012). How To Tame Your PhD. Thesis Whisperer Books [www.amazon.com ebook]
• Raman, R. (14 July 2017). 11 Simple Ways To Stop Overthinking Everything And Take Control Of Your Life. Retrieved from https://medium.com/the-mission/11-simple-ways-to-stop-overthinking-everything-and-take-control-of-your-life-cf6de0b8d83f

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Who holds the power?

Power relationships really change how we look at things. For example, the term 'man-splaining' is not reversed as 'fem-splaining', because, according to Brook, the power in our conversations lies largely with men (6 June 2018). This is an interesting idea which I am not quite sure I agree with.

This idea of reversal as a mirror to our actions is useful, however. It is a good way to clearly see the power dynamics clearly. Consider what women with children are asked in job interviews: it is usually put as "how will you balance home life with your work?". Of course, this is code for "How will you ensure you are available when you have sick children"? Men are not asked this type of question, because regardless of our enlightenment, we assume that men have wives to do all the family stuff.

Companies tend to be masculine places which institutionalise a masculine approach to power: power over others (Marshall, 1984). To see if your organisation prefers a masculine power model, see what happens to those who try to negotiate and collaborate their way to solutions; to use power 'with' or 'through' others (Marshall, 1984).

We make generalisations that men compete and women collaborate (Brook, 6 June 2018). I wonder if we only see that because we are socially constructed to see it that way? Whether our own inherent bias makes us blind to men who collaborate and women who compete?

There are so many underpinning assumptions in our social construction, sometimes I want to be an alien so I can ask all those terrible questions which slap us in the face like a custard pie with the ridiculousness of how we have created - and how we go along with - the world.

And hold up the mirror to yourself next time you go to ask a woman how she will cope. And remember to ask the men as well.


Sam

References:

• Brook, E. (6 June 2018). Is the term ‘mansplaining’ sexist? You asked Google – here’s the answer. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/06/is-the-term-mansplaining-sexist-google-autocomplete
• Marshall, J. (1984). Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

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Flexible extension screens

At the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the USA, A4 flexible screens were featured by a company called Faytech (here). The touch-screen is aiming to be thin and lightweight, and is being touted by the company as "the paper of the future". The idea is that the extension screen will allow your phone to work like a keyboard and the display will be your screen.

While commercialisation in the way that I would envisage it is still not quite happening yet, it is between currently 4mm and 8mm thick, and weighs about 400g. Being so light, it will be immensely portable, and once it is really foldable, it will be so much more useful. I hope the technology will catch up with the functionality that consumers will be wanting quite quickly.

Watch what Faytech say about it at:


Some while ago - more than a decade ago and before WiFi - I read about this as an idea in Japan. The idea was that "the paper" would replace newspapers, and we would download our pages directly from the internet. Didn't happen, largely because newspapers went digital with the rise of smartphones. However, that doesn't stop this new technology possibly arising at the right time.

Netflix on an A4 screen would be much better than on a smartphone screen!


Sam

References:

• Faytech (11 January 2019). 12.5" Lapscreen Touch Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.faytech.com/catalogue/product/125-lapscreen-touch-monitor-ft125tmlsc/
• TechRepublic (9 January 2019). CES 2019: Will this ultra-thin portable monitor be the paper of the future? Retrieved from https://www.techrepublic.com/article/ces-2019-will-this-ultra-thin-portable-monitor-be-the-paper-of-the-future/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=40778246

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Process to create teaching materials

Last year I mentored a new lecturer. This caused me to consider my own thinking and structures in a way that I haven't before. Even though I reflect regularly, it is only - as they say - when we come to try to teach someone else that we realise exactly what it is that we do!

As a result, I have realised that when creating and curating new material to teach to students, I have a four step process which I follow:

1. Define, scope and cite. Firstly I get definitions for all the things I am attempting to cover, and check it fits with (a) the remainder of the course, (b) the level of the delivery, and (c) the course learning outcomes. I turn to business or management encyclopedias, specialist area dictionaries and the most reputable of texts. I keep looking until I have a feel for the key players in the area. I read more than I need so I understand the landscape. I sift, compile, discard, rationalise and simplify until I have appropriate and memorable definitions, clear links to relevant theory, and a list of source materials in APA format.
2. Go through the components. Secondly I decide the level of detail I will teach to, which is both a forward and a backwards process. I rarely stop with a top level definition only: I will usually break down the components of the theory like a recipe for students, so, like Lego, they can take it apart and put it back together again either the same way, or to customise it. As I go I create PowerPoints to cover the new material. I look at how much time I need to fill - a two hour lecture will require roughly 15 slides and five or six activities plus a break. I chunk down the theory so that each element is no more than 15 minutes, and preferably 10 minutes.
3. Activities and application. Thirdly, I always apply theory in some way, so I look for suitable activities. These might be a case study; a video; an example; a reading; a discussion; a debate; a self-evaluation quiz; a physical activity; a research activity; or a group activity. I find that if theory is linked immediately to application, the learning is much more sticky for students. And I want recall to be easy, so that when they step out into the world of work, they don't have to rush off to re-read a theory in their old textbook in the midst of a union negotiation.
4. Review. I know enough now to prepare slides and be fairly sure I will have enough time simply through instinct, but I do review what I have put together so I have (i) sufficient teaching notes for each section if I were not to deliver it, (ii) check that everything is referenced appropriately, (iii) do a run through with online exercises and have an offline back up wherever possible, (iv) check that it meets the learning outcomes. Also, after I have delivered material for the first time, then I reflect later that day on what could be improved, and make notes on the changes so that they are reviewed the next time I cover that section.

The things we don't know that we know :-)

Sam

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The Big Mac Index

"Burgernomics" logo (The Economist, 2018)

Way, way back in 1986, The Economist decided to create a rather tongue-in-cheek index comparing the price of a McDonald’s Big Mac in a range of – now – 56 countries. Called ‘burgernomics’, it shows the cost of buying a Big Mac in USD, compared to the USA as the base.

Data from last July shows that the most expensive places to buy a Big Mac are – in order – Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, The US and Canada. Australia is in 10th place. New Zealand is 14th most expensive, followed by the UK in 15th place. China is in 35th place. The five cheapest places to buy are a Big Mac are Malaysia, Argentina, Turkey, the Ukraine, and – the cheapest of all – Russia at number 56.

While originally to show whether currencies are under- or over-valued, it is interesting that over more than 30 years the Big Mac index has come to have its own intrinsic value, made possible largely because of the consistency of the burger itself. It is made in the same way everywhere, using the same ingredients, with the same process, and theoretically with the same amount of labour. The inputs for production should be largely the same.

Even if McDonalds appears to you as it does to me (inedible), the index provides another parity-purchasing measure to illustrate the actual cost of living in the country where it is sold. Taken with the prices of fuel, the level of debt, unemployment and wages, this can give us a reasonably accurate idea of which nations are doing well, and which are not.

By most global statistics, the US is not doing well: the cost of living has increased, employment is down, and household income has decreased. It will be interesting to see what the Big Mac index shows this coming July.


Sam

• Reference: The Economist (11 July 2018). The Big Mac index. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/news/2018/07/11/the-big-mac-index

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What social class am I?

Data from the Great British Class Survey (Savage et al., 2013)

Recently I explored the precariat, a marginalised group of people in our societies (here). However, few of us in New Zealand would have any idea of what class we were on the British scale of societal divisions.

There are six divisions in British society today, according to a nation-wise UK study done between 2011 and 2013 by Savage et al (2013). The class groups are as follows:

1. Elite (6%). Very high economic capital (especially savings), high social capital, very high highbrow cultural capital.
2. Established middle class (25%). High economic capital, high status of mean contacts, high highbrow and emerging cultural capital.
3. Technical middle class (6%). High economic capital, very high mean social contacts, but relatively few contacts reported, moderate cultural capital.
4. New affluent workers (15%). Moderately good economic capital, moderately poor mean score of social contacts, though high range, moderate highbrow but good emerging cultural capital.
5. Traditional working class (14%). Moderately poor economic capital, though with reasonable house price, few social contacts, low highbrow and emerging cultural capital.
6. Emergent service workers (19%). Moderately poor economic capital, though with reasonable household income, moderate social contacts, high emerging (but low highbrow) cultural capital.
7. Precariat (15%). Poor economic capital, and the lowest scores on every other criterion.

There is an easy way you can find out which group you fall into, as the BBC has a site which you can go to in order to evaluate yourself. Anyone wanting to know their social class on the new British scale can go here.


Sam

References:

• BBC (2019). BBC Lab UK's Great British Class Survey. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22000973
• Savage, M., Devine, F., Cunningham, N., Taylor, M., Li. Y., Hjellbrekke, J., Le Roux, B., Friedman, S., & Miles, A. (2013). A new model of social class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey experiment. Sociology, 47(2), 219-250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038513481128

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Precariat readings for the career practitioner

BBC, The Great British Class Survey (2019)

Guy Standing has been the originator, a strong writer and an excellent advocate for a societal group known as the 'precariat'; a portmanteau construction of 'proletariat' and 'precarious'. This term refers to those working class people who once formed the proletariat but whose employment and social position has been increasingly eroded over the past fifty years due to factors outside their control. Those factors include globalisation, competition, free trade, user-pays, taxation, education, neo-liberalism, citizenship erosion and social welfare policy.

Standing defines the precariat as "an emerging class characterized by chronic insecurity, detached from old norms of labour and the working class" (2014, p. 1), where many of the expected rights of citizens have been whittled away by successive governments, international agreements and big business. Members this this group "have minimal trust relationships with capital or the state", having "truncated status" as citizens (Standing, 2015, p. 8).

These people are hidden. They are often exploited because their unclear status means they are unable report acts of marginalisation to government. They may be illegal climate refugees, sweatshop workers, sex workers, Uber drivers or have visa issues... termed 'over-stayers' in New Zealand.

For example, in "The Precariat: A new dangerous class" (2015), Standing tells the story of Prato, an Italian town, where 180,000 people were involved in the textile trade. in 1989, 38 Chinese workers arrived, and the industry began to change. More visitor-visa Chinese came, working illegally for Chinese-run firms in enclaves ruled by Chinese mafia, but linked to existing Italian firms, until by 2008 there were 45,000 Chinese workers in Prato. Existing local businesses had been unable to compete, and had closed, one by one. Then came the Global Financial Crisis, and Prato was bankrupted almost overnight. The Chinese workers were evicted, deported, demonised and used as a xenophobic election issue for politicians' profiles. The Chinese workers' had no voice, no rights and no recourse. They were members of the precariat.

Man is a switching predator: we will go where there is the easiest work for us, and will make sacrifices for our families. For example, there are a large number of Filipino parents working as domestic servants in Dubai: the grandparents raise the children while the parents work to earn the money to educate, feed and clothe them, while rarely seeing them. If women become pregnant in service, the children are illegal, and hidden (McQue, 2 January 2019).

The precariat is a worrying concept, and forms a growing sector of society. In Britain it has been estimated that the precariat numbers 15% of the population (Savage, 2015), also defining this group as "increasingly frustrated and angry, but also dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties".

I offer a reading list in the reference list below for career practitioners wanting to know more.


Sam

References:

• McQue, K. (2 January 2019). 'It's a very big torture': the children growing up in hiding in Dubai. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/jan/02/children-growing-up-in-hiding-in-dubai
• Savage, M. (2015). Social class in the 21st century. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
• Savage, M., Devine, F., Cunningham, N., Taylor, M., Li. Y., Hjellbrekke, J., Le Roux, B., Friedman, S., & Miles, A. (2013). A new model of social class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey experiment. Sociology, 47(2), 219-250. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038513481128
• Standing, G. (2015). The Precariat: A new dangerous class. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
• Standing, G. (2014). A precariat charter: From denizens to citizens. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

Recommended additional readings:

• Cassidy, R. (2014). Neglecting to confront conflicts of interest in industry-sponsored research unfairly burdens early career researchers. Impact of Social Sciences Blog: London School of Economics. Retrieved from http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/71460/1/blogs.lse.ac.uk-Neglecting%20to%20confront%20conflicts%20of%20interest%20in%20industry-sponsored%20research%20unfairly%20burdens%20early%20ca.pdf
• Curtis, B. & Curtis, C. (2015). Neoliberalism and racist debt practices in New Zealand: Pasifika peoples as the working poor. In T. Petray & A. Stephenson (Eds) Refereed Proceedings of TASA's 2015 Conference "Neoliberalism and Contemporary Challenges for the Asia-Pacific", 23 - 26 November 2015, James Cook University, Cairns QLD, Australia. (pp. 185-190). (if you have a ResearchGate account, you may be able to access this at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Natalia_Maystorovich_Chulio/publication/304790810_Neoliberalism_and_Contemporary_Challenges_to_the_Exhumation_of_Mass_Graves/links/577b758308ae213761ca6e3e.pdf#page=264)
• Di Fabio, A., & Palazzeschi, L. (2016). Marginalization and precariat: the challenge of intensifying life construction intervention. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(444), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00444 (you may be able to access this at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00444/full)
• Fitzgibbon, W. (2013). Riots and probation: governing the precariat: Wendy Fitzgibbon suggests that probation officers share some of the characteristics of those they supervise. Criminal Justice Matters, 93(1), 18-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/09627251.2013.833787
• Mauri, C. J. (2015). “The Precariat, Ph. D”: Relating Standing’s notion to contingent academic labour. In T. Petray & A. Stephenson (Eds) Refereed Proceedings of TASA's 2015 Conference "Neoliberalism and Contemporary Challenges for the Asia-Pacific", 23 - 26 November 2015, James Cook University, Cairns QLD, Australia. (pp. 260-265). (see Curtis & Curtis for access)
• Devine, F., Savage, M. (2015). BBC Great British Class Survey, 2011-2013 [data collection]. UK Data Service SN: 7616. http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7616-1
• Standing, G. (2016). The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay. London, UK: Biteback Publishing Ltd.
• Standing, G. (2013). Defining the precariat: A class in the making. Eurozine, April, 1-7. Retrieved from https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18276/1/Defining%20the%20precariat%20Eurozine%20Apr%202013.pdf
• Standing, G. (2009). Work after Globalization: Building occupational citizenship. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

NB: anyone wanting to know their social class on the new British scale can go to https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22000973 and take the test. This is where the image that accompanies this post comes from.

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Two Million Words

Having written about the benefits of using 750words.com a number of times (articles here), suddenly two million words have been racked up on my 750words.com odometer since November 2016. It is quite staggering how fast this total has grown.

In reaching this milestone, I have been thinking about just how much we each probably write in our lifetime. We tend to treat writing as ephemera. We don't stop to think about all the notes we jot down, the letters, emails and reports we create, because there is often nothing to mark its creation. Writing is a tool for us to do other things. My daily reflections don't represent my total daily output - that is much greater than what goes into 750words.com.

The process of how we humans came to create writing in the first place is such a miraculous thing. The shift from symbolism in images, to characters and runes is like a stroke of lightning... intricate and fantastical. If this was a story, who would have the imagination to write an evolution from coloured hand prints on a cave wall to the internet?

Before writing, we thought, talked and sang, and many cultures, such as Māori and Pasifika, are still strong in those traditions. Many people still prefer to reflect narratively: whether through talking, thinking or singing. But I some ways I am a 'modern miss'. it is writing which helps me to process, to think, to turn things around and try to have a look at them from a different direction.

And thank you, Kellianne and Buster, for 750words.com to help me do that.


Sam

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Windows secondary user account for troubleshooting

As usual, Ed Bott has come up with the goods in his Windows tip of the week column on TechRepublic (6 June 2018).

Ed was talking about troubleshooting when a Windows PC starts to play up: that the difficulty is in working out exactly what is going wrong. It is hard to know whether it is the OS, a driver, a hardware failure, an update or something we have inadvertently done ourselves (we will tinker, won't we?!).

Ed recommends that to help us hone in on what is going on, we set up a secondary user account, which we only EVER use for replicating errors on the main system. All we have to do is to sign into our secondary account, and to see if the error occurs there too.

If we can't replicate the error on our 'clean' secondary account, our problem is more likely part of a setting or service associated with our primary user profile.

Ed says:

On any Windows 10 PC, you can create a new user account by going to Settings > Accounts > Family & Other People. Under the Other People heading, click Add Someone Else To This PC.

The default options strongly push you to use an existing Microsoft account or create a new one. Don't enter an e-mail address, as prompted. Instead, create a local account by looking for the small links at the bottom of the next two dialog boxes. Click I Don't Have This Person's Sign-in Information, click Next, and then click Add A User Without A Microsoft Account.

So easy.


Sam

• Reference: Bott, E. (6 June 2018). Windows tip of the week: How to create a secondary account for troubleshooting. Retrieved from http://enews.techrepublic.com/hostedemail/email.htm?CID=51695109280&ch=0439FDABFF0CB7A368EA60FA22807EF9&h=8e32c31372369f3285040b904c74b53b&ei=sYL3aTGON&schema=echo3

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Building good meeting habits

We all get asked to attend meetings, and then when we get there, feel that there was no reason for our presence; that we didn't really contribute enough to be worth our time away from our main role. There was no WIIFM (what's in it for me).

However, there are some simple things you can do to make any meetings you call more effective. They are:

1. Call a meeting only after considering other options: especially question the value of regularly scheduled meetings. Pass information to others in writing instead of a meeting.
2. Different meeting formats: Consider holding the meeting standing up, or a walking meeting, or don't provide refreshments (make it feel snappy & people will treat it as being snappy). Meet in someone else's busy office, or in a high traffic area.
3. Agenda: ensure all know of the meeting's purpose and use a written agenda. Send it and any relevant written material well before the meeting
4. Have a FIRM start & finish time: Don't wait for late-comers, and don't recap when they arrive; they can catch up afterwards. Finish on time so everyone can get away as expected.
5. Have the Right People there: See that only the people who need to be there are there. If applicable encourage people to attend only the parts of the meeting that concern them, and tell them when that time will be (and stick to it).
6. Keep to the agenda: Use the agenda and don't let people introduce new ideas - that is outside the terms of this meeting. If a new idea is very important, halt this meeting & then set another one at a later time when everyone is briefed on the background for the new state of play.
7. Be focused: keep your meeting concise, constructive and on-topic. No phones. Limit verbosity.
8. Minutes: Assign someone to record recommendations, decisions and actions - ie item action by who? by when? Then distribute the minutes & actions it as soon after the meeting as possible.

These all sound like easy things to do, but it is surprising how often these things don't get done.

Let's all build good meeting habits!


Sam

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