March 23rd, 2010
As a business speaker, I am always amused and sometimes appalled at hearing legislators, board members and committee members speak their minds. Clearly the nation’s health care system needed big changes. Did we get the changes we needed? Do we even know what we needed? Will the issues of quality of care and preventative activities get the prominence they deserve?
If you listen to what the people say who did not support this bill, we have just thrown our nation and our collective futures to the dogs. That seems a little over-reactive to me. My impression is that the party out of power tends to spend more time posturing than anything else.
It reminds me of playing street hockey back in Brooklyn when I was a kid. There was this one guy from a few blocks over who liked to play hockey against my block. He was always starting fights and being a sore loser. One time he skated hard at me to try and check me against a parked car. You see the cars parked in the street served as our “boards”. He missed me because I moved out of his way. He slammed into the car and crashed all over himself, falling to the street. He jumped up and started yelling about how he hit me hard and I went down and I was a sore loser. I had to laugh out loud. But after a few minutes of his speech, a few kids thought he had actually checked me to the street, even though they saw what happened.
Politics, like street hockey, has some odd moments.
Tags: brooklyn, business, cars, dogs, health care bill, hockey, legislators
Posted in Management, business speaker, dogs, health care debate, marketing, people, personal growth | No Comments »
February 28th, 2010
So I am back at my home away from home. I think I must have been at Las Vegas Trade Shows 25 times in the last 10 years. Las Vegas is busy this weekend, or at least the Paris Hotel and Bally’s are. If people are not spending money, they must be some other people. It was a good weekend for those who live off of the tourists and gamers on The Strip. There was also a NASCAR race in Las Vegas this weekend that pulled a lot of people. Still people left time for the Olympics. I heard lots of screams and groans when the US tied Canada in hockey. I was having a snack in one of the restaurants, but could hear everyone clearly from the sportsbar. I sure heard the noise when The US beat Canada in overtime.
I am here to promote the PhoneSmart business, act as a business speaker for a round table session and a presentation to regional managers on sales training initiatives. I hope to spend some time with current clients and some future clients. It all kicks off early Monday.
Tags: bally, business, hockey, las vegas, nascar, olympics, paris, the strip, trade shows
Posted in Travel, business speaker, marketing | No Comments »
December 11th, 2009
If you are the leader of a project or the manager of a team and you are looking for a good phrase to help you keep a business meeting on track, try “I am going to interrupt here”.
As a business speaker, I realize that time is one of the most precious commodities any of us have. People who attend my sessions make me feel really good when they tell me that they found my keynote speech or my training session to be well worth the time spent. When wrapping up a meeting, I am always pleased to hear someone say “good meeting” or “that wasn’t a waste of time”. I hear a lot of complaints from many people about meetings. Meetings drag on. Meetings get derailed by someone who is feeling talkative. Meetings stray from their purpose because someone who is going off on a tangent. If you are the business leader at this meeting, it is your job to keep the meeting on track. It is your job to highlight a valuable point and pursue it. It is your job to stop someone when they have made a good point to keep them from talking too long. It is your job to stop someone if they are about to stray off track. A meeting is not the time to let someone talk on and on. A business meeting is not the time to let people develop ideas and go off on related paths. These activities are for brainstorming sessions and for open-ended discussions. A business meeting has a theme; it has a specific topic and it has specific goals.
The polite thing to do in a business meeting is to ruthlessly keep the meeting on track, so there are clear outcomes and action items. Keep the meeting on track and a two hour meeting can be done in half an hour. Keep a meeting on track and a half day session can be done in an hour and a half.
Simply say “I am going to interrupt here” and then get the meeting back on track. Take a good point and tie it up. Re-start the discussion on the point of topic. Get control of the flow. You can qualify your remark with something like, “This is a great idea for a brainstorming session. Develop some parameters and get a few people together to develop that idea at another time”, or “That is a topic for another discussion. Send me an email recap of the idea later and we will discuss it at another time.”
Tags: business, meetings
Posted in Management, marketing, people, sales | No Comments »
