Meetings are at the heart of consulting work. As simple as it may sound, organizing and conducting a productive meeting is far from an easy task, requiring multiple contributions and working steps. This presentation aims at giving you the basics to handle them properly (each working steps being fully detailed in dedicated presentations).

1. Introduction to ‘meetology’
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2. Even if more and more organizations try to limit their number, meetings are still at
the heart of (consulting) work
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10 Years
You will spend up to 10
years in meeting over your
career
You will handle 1.2 tons
of meeting related papers
You’d better get prepared!
You will meet with nearly
250,000 persons

3. Meetings are much more than a bunch of people in a room, talking. They require
specific techniques and know how to be productive.
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4. Meetings can take several forms depending on whether you communicate ‘in the
flesh’ or not
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Conference call
In-person
Visio conference
New technologies have dramatically transformed
meetings, making it way simpler, quicker and effective to
gather people from all around the world

5. Meetings are no ‘social’ events and participants usually follow one of 4 main
purposes …
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Share
Decide
Solve
Sell

6. … leading to a large variety of different meetings
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Information meeting
Share information with interested
parties (ex. present a new
organization)
Conclusion meeting
Share final (or intermediary)
conclusions with your client
face-off
Interview
Collect info from one interlocutor
Workshop
Address a ‘technical’ issue through discussion between a
selected number of ‘knowing’ stakeholders
Committee
Get managerial decisions / or at least
validation (on a given project, work-
stream etc.)
Brainstorming
Create solutions through open
discussions and free associations
Alignment meeting
Get a consensual position from
different stakeholders with
potentially diverging interests
Sales meeting

7. The number of participants and the level of interactions between them strongly vary
from one category of meeting to the other
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Medium
MediumHighLow
HighLow # of participants
LevelofInteraction
Workshop
Brainstorming
Roundtable
Conclusion meeting
Operational
committee
Steering
committee
Interview
Sales meeting
Pitch
Alignment
meeting
Information
meeting
Share
Decide
Solve
Sell

8. To be a success, meetings generally require 4 categories of contributions …
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… that are all equally important and therefore should all
be handled with great care

9. Meeting life cycle counts 4 working steps, each requiring specific techniques and
know-how
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Initiate Prepare Animate Follow-up
Define features &
launch organization
Collect relevant info &
formalize meeting
documentation
Lead discussions, ensure
focus on key objectives &
manage time
Formalize and circulate
meeting minutes &
follow-up on actions

10. What is a good / a bad meeting?
▪ Participants could not express themselves as the
chairman or 1 or 2 persons have monopolized
speech
▪ The meeting course was out of control with
conflicts or many ‘off-agenda’ issues
▪ The meeting started late and finished awfully late
▪ The meeting was globally perceived as a loss of
time
▪ It is impossible to tell what was the point when
leaving the meeting room
▪ Participants know why they attend
▪ They are aware of the objectives
▪ They have read meeting material in advance and
are prepared to efficiently contribute
▪ Participants listen
▪ Discussions are focussed on key points and
conducted in a timely manner
▪ Participants know what they have to do next when
they leave the meeting room
A bad meeting A good meeting
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