A New Series on Business Startups — Part 6

A new study shows that a great deal of time is wasted at meetings, mainly through faulty procedures, but also because many are not necessary in the first place. Add on travel time and overnight stays and it becomes essential to control the number and length of meetings you attend.

Entrepreneurs setting up a new business will find themselves attending more meetings and interviews than they deem necessary for their purpose. Similarly, small business owners are frequently asked to attend, or even chair, formal meetings. A brief summary of the rules governing business meetings will be useful here.

The chairman, or chair, is the ruling authority at any meeting. It falls to him/her to make the initial arrangements and to draw up an agenda. The main considerations will be:

* Is the meeting absolutely necessary?
* Who needs to come?
* Are they all available on the proposed date?
* What is the precise subject to be discussed?
* What will it achieve?
* At what times will it start and finish?
* Where will it be held?
* What information is required in advance?
* Are any other facilities needed, i.e. projectors, lunch etc.

The next step is to draw up an agenda. This will consider any topics that the attendees wish to raise. It will also contain:

* Place, time and date of meeting.
* Subject, or subjects, to be considered.
* Subject order for discussion.
* Other points of interest.

The agenda should be distributed in advance to all the proposed attendees at the appropriate time, i.e. neither too early, nor too late. The ideal time for distribution is not so far in advance of the gathering that the people may forget, and yet giving them sufficient time to assimilate any brief and do all the necessary homework. At the meeting the chairman will:

* Start on time unless there are pressing reasons against it.
* Introduce newcomers.
* State the purpose and aims of the meeting.
* Follow the agenda as written.
* Let the meeting flow if progress is being made.
* Sum up the arguments if they are being lost.
* Pass on to the next item if the meeting is getting bogged down.
* Not allow drama queens to dominate the discussion.
* Conclude the meeting on time if possible.

Meetings are useful in that they get people together face to face. Prevarications can be quickly worn down. Misconceptions, or areas not well defined, can be discussed, and conclusions agreed there and then. On the other hand, a badly handled or mistimed meeting may just be a waste of everyone’s time and effort.

More than half of small business owners think that their enterprises are harder to run than three years ago, according to a survey commisioned by T-Mobile.

A third believed customers, suppliers, and even co-workers now demand faster response times. This has increased the pressure on smaller businesses, which often have fewer resources than larger outfits.

Dead time, defined as time wasted by travel and meetings, cost small concerns around $120,000 (£60,000) a year.

Head of T-Mobile’s business marketing said, “The rise of the internet has given rise to a ‘want it now’ culture — customers expect an immediate response to every inquiry. This is forcing smaller firms to operate in a different way and use all the tools at their disposal to be more productive and efficient”.

Small Business Booster suggests a careful reading of : Take a Nap! Change Your Life by Dr Sara Mednick, previously reviewed.

An afternoon nap may seem like a luxury to most small business owners. We tend to associate it with lazy folk who live in hot climates and eat dinner around midnight.

However, a new book by Harvard University sleep expert Dr Sara Mednick, Take a Nap! Change Your Life, describes the the practice of taking a nap as a “lifesaving habit”. She claims that snoozers make fewer mistakes and enjoy “boosted brainpower”.

One of her experiments involved one group taking a nap, another group drinking a mug of coffee (200mg of caffeine), and a control group taking a placebo.

They were then given a series of tasks, including typing and spatial skill tests. The coffee drinkers performed much worse than the placebo takers, while the nappers performed best of all. So the common assumption that coffee will keep us going through the day is simply not true.

Dr Mednick, a psychologist and research scientist, has accumulated a lot of evidence that a simple siesta in the afternoon is the best medicine for a more productive work life. In addition, people who sleep for 30 minutes at least three times a week had a 37 percent lower chance of a heart attack, according to a lead researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health.

In another study, recently published in Nature Neuroscience journal, the Dr Mednick put 30 well-rested people through the same set of tasks four times in the course of a day, starting at 9am through to 7pm.

Performance dropped by 50 percent in those who stayed awake all day. However, the volunteers who took an afternoon nap kept up their performance throughout the day.

NASA has also made a contribution. Tests conducted by them show that astronauts who took a brief snooze doubled their alertness even if they were not tired before the nap. They also increased their work productivity by at least 13 percent.

The ideal time to nap apparently is between 1pm and 3pm which enables the most restful kind of sleep pattern for boosting performance.

Small business owners need to keep on top of their game since they rarely have a backup team ready to take over at short notice. Time off can cause all sorts of problems, especially if it’s prolonged. Half an hour a day would seem a small sacrifice to keep on keeping on.

The Enviro-Entrepreneur School in London is looking for potential entrepreneurs who have an idea for a green company or an environmentally interesting product to take part in a four-day business development programme at Imperial College, London.

The event takes place at the college’s Tanaka Business School on July 2 to July 5.

Go here for more details.