Musings from Dennis #271. Right after the first task force meeting for the Winnie the Pooh Singapore launch, the team was energized. We eagerly worked through the next steps in preparation for our second meeting. Our boss had chaired the first session and asked my colleague and me to take on the role of chair for subsequent meetings.
Confident
in our plans, we launched straight into the second meeting—only to be abruptly
stopped.
“What is
this meeting about?” she asked.
“Why are we
meeting?”
We were
shocked. Surely she knew the purpose of the meeting and the agenda—we had just
discussed it in detail at the previous session. What we failed to realize at
the time was that she was prompting us to do something important: to begin the
meeting by recapping what had already been discussed, clearly laying out the
agenda, and articulating the outcomes we hoped to achieve.
At that
point in my licensing career, it was still early days for me. It was 1997, and
I had little exposure to how meetings were effectively conducted. That moment
became a powerful learning experience for me. Looking back now, I fully
appreciate the value of that lesson. Today, the most effective meetings are
those that begin with clear context—where key background points are revisited,
everyone is aligned on why they are there, and the desired outcomes are
explicitly stated. It’s a simple discipline, but one that sets the tone for
focused discussion and meaningful results.
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