The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings [Hardcover]

Eli Mina (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000

Whether you're the chair or the attendee, the minutes-taker or the CEO working with a governing board, you'll find plenty of useful tools, easy-to-implement ideas, and practical suggestions to make your meetings more effective and productive. Everything you need for healthy meetings and effective decision-making: the 10 key ingredients of a successful meeting; using preventive and visionary planning; becoming a master facilitator; surviving contentious meetings; preventing common meeting ailments. Confused by meeting rules? This book demystifies them. Tips also for conducting virtual meetings, teleconferencing, and video conferencing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Contains scripts to get a meeting back on track, deal with nitpickers who insist on using every rule of order. -- Western Living

Includes scripts to get a meeting back on track, deal with nitpickers who insist on using every rule of order, etc. -- Western Living, October 2000

This book shows how to organize, conduct, and facilitate meetings, showing how to oversee a meeting for maximum results. -- BOOKWATCH, October 2000

From the Author

The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings contains a variety of practical and proven ideas to help you plan and manage meetings and deal with controveresial issues. It also includes a chapter to help you demystify and humanize the rules of order in fornal meetings.

Although several examples and case studies relate to more formal meetings (e.g.: boards of directors, annual meetings with many members in attendance), the fundamental principles are universally applicable. Some of the scripts in the book will need to be modified if they are to be used in corporate settings and small staff meetings.

Chapter 7 on rules of order that make sense disspels the mystery behind parliamentary procedure (e.g.: Robert's Rules of Order). It gives you tools to demystify and humanize the rules of order and make them simpler and easier to use. It can help you use the rules to facilitate progress instead of confusing and frustrating your members. This chapter includes plain language terminology and tools to combat procedural nonesense in meetings (nit pickers and `closet parliamentarians').

To make the best use of the book, read it once and list ideas you want to use. Return to the book for more ideas once you've implemented the first batch of ideas. The book should serve you as a smorgasboard of ideas. Some will apply to informal staff meetings and some to formal board or municipal council meetings.

It should be noted that Chapter 9, "The Virtual Meeting" includes only a light coverage of this topic and has no analysis of current technology and decision suppoprt systems. This technology is evolving quickly and what is current today may become obsolete tomorrow.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 318 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1st edition (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814405606
• ISBN-13: 978-0814405604
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,673,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo, January 18, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings (Hardcover)

As a recording secretary and municipal administrator, I would recommend this book to anyone who participates, chairs, or organizes any type of business meeting. Mr. Mina's book is full of practical suggestions that are easy to implement. After making several simple changes to our meeting procedure, everyone noticed considerable improvement. "The Complete Guide to Business Meetings" is guaranteed to save your organization time and money.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A helpful book, June 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings (Hardcover)

I found this book to be very helpful-it is a refreshing approach to meetings, and especially to the confusing and often mysterious rules of order that govern many formal meetings. It has many practical ideas and sample scripts that can easily be used. The Chapter on rules of order that make sense (Chapter7)has helped me the most. As a result, I have been able to make a big difference in the formal meetings that I attend, by introducing these new concepts. The most practical part is the troubleshooting guide in Chapter 10. In a table format, it lists common meeting ailments and simple and practical ways to remedy and prevent them. The book is full of innovative ideas that can easily be put in to practise.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to make the most of a meeting, February 21, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings (Hardcover)

Business meetings often don't encourage productivity because their managers don't know how to put together productive routines and sessions: this book shows how to organize, conduct and facilitate a variety of meetings, showing how to make the most of a meeting and how to oversee a meeting for maximum results.