Making Meetings Count, Part 2

by Yvonne LaRose

July 21, 2002 —

We've talked about two means of doing in-house training so that you can
still keep your people up to date on technological enhancements while
nurturing team spirit. There's a third alternative that's quite
effective for doing this that's even more cost effective than the first
two.

Department Meeting Experts
A better alternative for medium to large departments with varied skill
levels is having department meeting trainings. Most likely, your people
are constantly interacting with and serving other parts of the company,
including outside clients. It's important to let them feel everyone in
the department is as up to speed as the others in the department or a
guru on a particular subject. It's also important to have your
department members respect the knowledge of their fellow team members
and able to communicate with them about particular IT practice needs.

This is a time when you can put your monthly department meetings to work
for you and reap quite a bit in department savings as well as team
building and knowledge sharing. What has been done in some of the larger
law firms since the 1980s is to have one or two of the department
members develop a department oral report on a unique aspect of the
department practice.

What happens is even if that designee has only a moderate amount of
knowledge on the subject, in order to prepare their report and train the
rest of the department, they must become something of a guru on their
assigned subject. They will need to master one or two of the latest
practices so that they know how to deploy them and how to demonstrate
those practices to others with ease and facility. These reports usually
take about 10 to 15 minutes for delivery with an accompanying question
and answer session.

This is a more desirable platform to the previous two. One reason is
that your departmental members will feel more connected to what's
happening and more engaged. Your presenter already knows the
capabilities and limitations of the company and can tailor their
presentation with those factors in mind.

ITworld