Kickoff Meeting Success Secrets Revealed – BYB004

[feature_box style=”11″ only_advanced=”There%20are%20no%20title%20options%20for%20the%20choosen%20style” alignment=”center”] Spring is the season of cleaning and new beginnings. It’s also the season of new projects, restarts of stopped or previously failed projects, and kickoff meetings! I’ll share a few battle-tested tips for running successful kickoffs.

How many steps are there to high-performance health? 12? 50? 100? The real answer may surprise (and please) you. We’ll discuss how great health can be simplified in this first part of an ongoing series.

In the *Bangin’ Your Productivity* segment, I’ll share a tool that could help your eyes, improve your focus, and keep you working longer!

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12 Kickoff Meeting Success Secrets Revealed! Listen to the Audio:

Show Intro

Welcome back to Bangin’ Your Business. My mostly unconventional take on supersonic health, productivity, and business. I believe in the good health+good business = great world equation.

Each week I’ll share new insights you just gotta know, in the areas of life, health, productivity and business–popular, or not.

The show is always free, but I do ask two things from you:

1. To take bold action on at least one thing tip or topic and implement it in your own life. I pack a lot into each show so you’ll have a number of options to choose from. But don’t be overwhelmed; just pick one thing, make it a habitual part of your daily routine.
2. And, if you DO find the information helps you in any way, please consider leaving a 5-star rating, and positive written review over on iTunes. Which, by the way: we’re NOW in iTunes! Here’s the link:

https://corbinlinks.com/itunes

New here? Start your journey with Bangin’ Your Business — Episode 1

Bangin’ Your Health

This week: 7 Keys to High-Performance Health – Brief Overview

Want to find out everything at once? Get all 7 Keys plus action plans in your hand today? You can invest in your health and buy a my eBook now, which includes free updates for life (no hidden “upgrade fees”).

OR, if you don’t want to invest the latte money just hang out with me for a while. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing the entire book content.

Concepts from my “How to Up Your Health Game in 30 Days or Less” / aka “7 Steps to High-Performance Health” book are foundational to a lot of what I teach and share every day. So this week I’ll start with a brief overview of the concepts, and dive deeper into the book content in future episodes.

7 Steps Background

A lot of the health material shared on this show comes as a result of many years of study, nutritional school, talking with others, and tons of personal experience. This is what lead me to lose over 80 pounds and keep them off for years. They also helped me avoid doctors for over 13 years, beat (yes, beat) acid reflux “disease” and many other things.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say these principles fundamentally and completely changed my life.

Over time, I found there were so many conflicting viewpoints on health, ranging from the ultra and overly simple, to the vastly complex. In short, none of those approaches worked for me—and I’ve tried over 16 different “popular” types of diets in the past.

It was after much trial and error and results tracking, that I settled on a “7 Step Program”. An early version of this program started as a free 7-week email course (opt-in required), and later became a full-fledged book. Based on all the feedback from people who took the course, I put together a consolidated program. The consolidated book form was named “How to Up Your Health Game in 30 Days or Less.”

That’s just a little bit of background on where the 7 Steps came from. For details on my health and weight journey, check out the about page at https://banginyourbusiness.com/about.

7 Steps Premise

7 Steps to High-Performance Health is based on several core principles:

• It’s what you ADD that makes the most difference to your health, NOT what you take away.
• Simple steps are the ones that get followed.
• Take one step, make it a habit (20 – 40 days, depending on which research you read), and make it a permanent part of your daily routine. Take another step, repeat, and so on and so on.
• Heavy exercise is NOT a requirement for weight loss. In fact, one could be total potato and still be somewhat healthy by employing sound nutrition. (I’m not advocating inactivity for many reasons, just making the point that exercise, per se, is not the key part of weight loss.)
• Great health need not be expensive, time consuming, or require fancy supplements and packages.

I’ll be sharing much more on these principles in coming weeks.

For more on my health and weight-loss journey, check out the BYB “About” Page.

Feature Segment

Ah….spring. Spring cleaning, weather changes, new beginnings, snow birds flying and driving home for the summer (at least in Florida) and meetings. Lots and lots of meetings!

((insert: results of my office spring cleaning at BYB HQ))

If your company is on the January to December accounting cycle, April kicks off “Q2”. Or maybe you’re on the “other” system, and April kicks of “Q4”. Whichever it is, new spring means new projects—or restarts of paused projects.

Over the years we’ve found that an effective kickoff meeting—or lack of one—can make or break the success of a new project or program. So why not do it up right the first time?

I’ve been in literally hundreds of kickoff meetings over the years. The following list of success tips have served me and my clients well.

Quick note before we start: the list was originally created for big program kickoffs. But the information applies to all major kickoffs—whether for a new app that costs a thousand dollars, a new blogging website, on up through multi-million dollar ERP and HRS implementations.

I’ll call one out, riff on it a bit, then move on to the next one.

The following list is an outline only. Be sure to listen to the full BYB004 episode for details on each of the 12 tips.

Here’s the list:

1. Do not advertise the meeting beyond the required attendees. The focus is on effective task understanding, agreement, assignment, management, and alignment to program goals and requirements.
2. Conduct the meeting in isolation. Avoid using your own conference rooms, cafeterias, or campus common areas.
3. Create and maintain a tight agenda. Allocate a skilled facilitator and give him or her free reign to manage the meeting as needed.
4. Share the document with all and track revisions. Everyone needs to work off the same copy.
5. Clearly define the first three action steps of the program. Specifically, these are the actions that commence the moment all attendees leave the meeting.
6. Have the event catered. Keep everyone as close to the meeting facility as possible. Think bootcamp or workshop, vs. just a casual “in and out’ meeting.
7. Discuss and schedule around any planned absences or known issues that will impede the project start.
8. Ensure everyone clearly understands how to access the plan and all documents, and their individual responsibilities for their assigned tasks.
9. Establish the recurring meeting schedules with all attendees.
10. Keep phones in a box outside the door. This one is perhaps the hardest these days, but dedicated focus to the message at hand is crucial. This one tactic alone can make or break the success of your program kickoff.
11. Avoid extraneous discussion items such as spending one or two hours debating acronyms for the program, what the cafeteria is serving, and everything else non-related.
12. Break every hour.

The list isn’t exhaustive, but will help keep things moving forward on a success track, especially with really big teams, budgets, and projects.

I should mention that some of these meetings can be really long: 1 – 2 days or more. I’ll soon share some tips for surviving and thriving in those looonnnnggg business meetings!

Bangin’ Your Productivity

Back in the mid 1990’s, I worked with a guy who wore glasses just some of the time.

He would just put them on, and take them off at seemingly random intervals.

One day, a coworker asked him about his frequent “glasses on / glasses off” habit. “Are those reading glasses?”

He replied “They don’t really do anything, except help me focus a bit more”

Fast forward many years later, I was having a lot of issues with eye strain and read somewhere about computer glasses. At the time, there were days I literally spent 14 hours in front of 2 – 3 monitors, and it really took a toll on my eyes. (Ok, I know that’s NOT the healthy way to go; you should reduce eye strain, take frequent breaks, etc., etc. but my mind wasn’t there at the time.)

Years and years of intense computer work (many of those years were way before it was “cool”), affected my eyes and took my 20-10(ish) vision to 20-30+. The idea of continuing to work while halting my eye degeneration was an interesting thought.

Anyway…

I purchased a pair of Gunnar Optics:

They look really cool and get a lot of comments if I wear them in public or on a client site. Maybe attention isn’t your thing? You want to know: do they work?

My results:

1. I use them about 25% of the time, especially for really long sessions.
2. They do help me with eye strain. I’m able to do longer Pomodoro-style productivity cycles.
3. Matte finish monitors (which are harder to find these days) are really helpful; even more than computer glasses. If you can marry a matte anti-glare screen with the occasional use of computer glasses and proper eye care, your eyes will thank you.

NOTE: My own experience with computer glasses is quite similar to the former co-worker we met at the beginning of the segment. I have them on for a while, off for a while, etc. My take is that your single best eye-friendly investment is in the best monitor / screen you can. High refresh rates, high pixel densities, accurate color matching, high resolutions, and matte finishes.

We’ll talk more about those in the future.

What Computer Glasses Do

The whole idea is to reduce glare, which in turn reduces eye strain.

Computer glasses are also portable, and can be highly useful for consultants or IT Pros who have to move between multiple systems and screens throughout the day. Since you can’t necessarily control the resolution or monitor quality in server rooms or client desktops, you can at least shield your eyes when working in front of them.

Do you have to spend a ton of money on fancy glasses?

Nope! I referenced Gunnars above because that’s what I happened to try first. Plus, I don’t wear prescription glasses or contacts, so an off-the-shelf solution like Gunnar worked well for me.

But you can get good computer glasses a lot of places these days. You can even purchase them in most of the eyewear stores, or even ask for a prescription. I will say that the Gunnar options have come way down in price over the years. My pair (which I bought in 2008 and am still using) cost around $180 USD. I’ve seen them on Amazon and other places for less than half that.

Bottom line for productivity…

AllAboutVision.com published some interesting findings from the UAB School of Optometry. Studies suggest that correct eyewear and strain reduction could improve productivity by 20% or more. (Link in the show notes.)

Closing Segment

We covered a lot of ground today! Two things I ask of you:

1. Take action!! I love sharing information and my lessons learned from my successes and utter failures in life. But none of it will make a difference if you don’t implement. Pick out one of the tips or information snippets and try it out. Add it in—right now, today!
2. If you like what you hear, and find it useful, will you consider subscribing to the show in iTunes and leaving a rating (#of stars) and a written text review? I respect your time and know it takes a few minutes to do, but your reviews make a difference in so many ways. They help keep the show free and running smoothly, they help get the word out to new listeners and help the show expand and grow. Thank you in advance.

Coming Up

Do you like working for free? Should you? Is the offer of “free consulting” the right way to acquire clients? I’ll explore the pros and cons of the free consulting approach, including what I’ve publicly said before, and a big reversal of stance right here on this show.

Plus, we’ll dive into the popular topic of detoxing. Why so many health celebrities seem to do them: over and over again, what’s really necessary, and how to do it the right way for maximum benefit.

Plus, I’ll have a productivity strategy that will unleash your inner creative! I’ll see you next week!

In the meantime, stay healthy, stay productive, bang your business to new levels. This is Corbin Links, signing off another episode of Bangin’ Your Business.

Recommended References

• AllAboutVision.com: Worker Productivity and Computer
  Vision Syndrome
• How to Up Your Health Game in 30 Days or Less
• Corbin’s Health Journey (The “Cliff Notes” version…)