Twice recently I was invited to a meeting via email. The invitation had a title for the meeting, but there was no further information about the reason for the meeting.
Please don’t do this. I’m begging you on behalf of your team members.
Whether it’s a meeting you’ve planned or an email that’s not telling the whole story or something visual you’ve posted.
Lack of information is costing you.
It’s costing you and your team time, because people want to know what the meeting is about. Their time is valuable and they don’t want to commit to something that maybe they could skip and answer questions about instead.
It’s costing you and your team morale. It’s just defeating to read an email or get a meeting invite or see some posting on a wall that is missing key information that could have been added but wasn’t. Some people will do the extra work to try to find out the missing details. Others will just try to fill in the blanks themselves. Some will just chalk it up to more miscommunication.
Every time anyone in your organization is going to print something or plan a meeting or send an email, make it the company norm to do a 15 second review before they send or have someone else look at it. You could have designated proofreaders and even if they are remote from each other they could do a quick screenshare and catch each other’s missing info.
Bottom line is that things like this seem small but can cause a lot of hidden issues that you may never see.
And the worst part is they’re usually preventable.
So, next time you’re going to send out a meeting invite and it’s just called “changes” with no more description… you might want to elaborate on that before everyone goes nuts.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. If you’ve been enjoying these one of the best thing you can do is tell a fellow entrepreneur or business leader. You spreading the word helps me help more people. Thanks so much.
