Tree Meeting

I’ve been in a lot of meetings that have failed. I’m not sure sure how to make meeting work, but I’m beginning to understand why they fail.

Forget the time cost of meetings. Take the number of people in your meeting and multiply by the time of the meeting. 12 people in a short 20 minute meeting costs the same as a half a day by one person. To make your meeting fail, never consider this calculation; always have the most people in the longest meeting possible.

Have meetings just because. Yesterday’s meeting failed, so there needs to be another meeting today. Have another meeting tomorrow to keep the trend going.  We all know that meetings are essential for work, so make sure you have as many as possible.

Communicate 1-0n-1 in large group meetings. If you have a lot of people to talk to, tracking them down and talking to them individually would make too much sense.  Instead, gather everyone you need into one large meeting.  During that meeting, go around the room and have a one-on-one discussion with each person.  Everyone else will surely be bored to death while they listen in on your discussion with someone else.

Darken the room so everyone can’t see you. You prepared two whole slides to use during your hour long presentation–you better turn off the lights for your whole 30-minute presentation so people can see your slides and not you.  You want to make sure you place undue importance on that slide containing inspirational quotes that probably could be skipped all together.  Making people squint to see you in the dark will help your meeting fail.  Lowering the lights will also have the added bonus of helping people feel sleepy during the meeting.

Avoid assignments. If you want your meetings to fail, about the last thing you want to do is to ask people to prepare for the meeting.  People should walk into a meeting with no idea of what it is about, and with no ideas, topics, or research to share.  Additionally, avoid making assignments during the meeting for work to be completed outside of the meeting.

Don’t read this book: Successful Meetings: How to Plan, Prepare, and Execute Top-Notch Business Meetings by Shri Henkel.  Of all the books I found at the library to improve meetings, this one was fairly short, straight forward, and easy to follow.  Anyone looking to have bad meetings should stay far away from this book.  It is available from Amazon.com or from the Square Galaxy Store.

(Image used under CC license from Flickr).

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Most Disorganized Store goes to the Lindon, Utah Walmart. While the Walmart sale was to begin at 5am, we walked into the store at 4:30 to find people already walking around with products in their carts and already lined up to check out. They had isles completely blocked off, making it hard to get through the store to the items we were looking at. We even found a few cashiers checking people out before 5am. I also observed that every laptop sold needed an override at the cash register for a serial number which wasn’t available because people couldn’t pick up a laptop except from a trailer around the back of the store only after they paid for it.

Worst Planning also goes to Walmart. The front page of their Black Friday advertisement was promoting their price matching policy. While price matching is a great way for consumers to get good prices, price matching at 5am really slows down already long lines. We were behind this guy who had to price match some DVDs, and it took like 5 times longer for him to check out.

Most Ridiculous Line goes to the American Fork Target. We casually walked in looking for sales on games, but then casually walked out when we saw that the line looped through two thirds of the store. Since we didn’t actually wait in line at Target, we give a dishonorable mention to the next door Old Navy. Although they opened hours earlier, the Old Navy associates seemed disinterested in checking people out speedily. Not that the line was long, it was just slow. They problem was compounded by the fact that they were trying to get people to sign up for an Old Navy charge card. They were telling people they could go to the front of the line if they were to sign up for a new charge card. What this was really doing was punishing the people who didn’t sign up for a card, by making them wait longer in line behind the people that did sign up for a new card.

Best Deal Hiding goes to the Staples in Orem. Sure we didn’t get there when it opened, but we couldn’t even tell if they had the items we were looking for.

Best Handing of Chaos goes to Best Buy. Although they had masses of people, they had employees available to help you find things, the checkout line was reasonable, they had maps to hand out, and they generally seemed pretty organized. Other stores might look to Best Buy’s handling to improve their performance for next year’s awards.

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What was really good about shopping at Amazon.com was that their deals began at midnight on Black Friday, while the conventional stores started their sales around 5 or 6 am.  I was able to not stress about finding the best deal on that particular DVD because I had already purchased it earlier in the morning in my pajamas all warm at home.

I’m not able to say whether or not Amazon.com will have any great deals this year, but I’ll be looking.  I have noticed that they are running special deals all week this week, so maybe I’ll find something there.

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I’ve had about 8 bags of Chex Mix in my cupboards, mostly because the Target website allowed me to print as many coupons as I wanted.  I could go to the web site, and select the coupons I wanted, and Target would simply display the image of the coupon allowing me to print as many copies of the image that I wanted.

This allowed for lots of Target coupon abuse.  There are even Target coupon generators out there which allow a person to indicate any number of current and prior (non-expired) coupons to print all at once.

However, today I notice major indicators that this all is changing.

It seems that Target will be teaming with E-centives for more controlled coupon printing.  With this new system, Target has more control over how many coupons get printed.   I’m guessing that it will also only allow a coupon to be printed only twice on a particular computer.  Users will have to install a special coupon printer in order to print the new coupons.

Target has just loaded up some new coupons, and there are some pretty good deals:

• $1 off 6 cans of vegetables, which are currently on sale this week.  Final price when you buy 6: $0.29/can
• $1 off 2 bottles of cranberry juice, which is also on sale this week.  Final price when you buy 2: $1.59/each

My reaction is that the new coupon system will probably be a little less convenient, especially for Linux users like myself (Linux is not supported by their printing software).  However, if it allows Target to provide more deals because they won’t be as abused as they were before, then I think it is a fair solution.

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(suppose you don’t have a cell phone, that the Qwest phone line is your only phone).

Also, how come you don’t get a refund from Qwest for the time that is spent when your phone (or Internet) wasn’t working? I think that if my Internet is disconnected for a day, they should refund me at least a day’s worth of charges on my bill.

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Screenshot of Best Buy Ad, June 23, 2009

I am a little bit disturbed how close the words “buy” and “happier” are.  It is like they are trying to send a clear message saying that you need to spend money in order to be happy.

I refute this and claim that you don’t need to “buy” to be happy.

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How checkout buttons appear

I’ve added up the number of sales and the total volume of sales (in dollars) over the last month, and I found that most people prefer to checkout through Paypal.I suppose most people prefer to checkout with a provider they are more familiar with.  Since Paypal has been around the longest, I think many people prefer to stick with what they know.  Although Amazon checkout is the newest, people recognize and associate the Amazon brand with e-commerce, which is why many people prefer to use Amazon.

My question to readers, if you were shown three buttons for three checkout providers (like I’ve shown above), which button would you be most likely to click?

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A few months ago, I was shopping at a local Kay Jewelers, and from the second I stepped in the door of the store, I could smell stale cigarette smoke.  Even the hint of smoke made me less comfortable in the store, and made me less inclined to shop there.

I was also shopping at a Crate & Barrel, and there was this one male associate on whom you could smell smoke every time you spoke to him.  It made me not want to talk to him, or for that fact, to ask any associate for help.

I don’t know if it is legal for stores to discriminate based on the smell of their employees, but they should be aware that a bad smelling associate can hurt sales.

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Flickr Stock Image

President Obama wants to spend taxpayer money (to the tune of $8,000,000,000) on Amtrak to improve and expand the American passenger rail system.  I hope the money is spent well, because right now there are seious problems with traveling by train.

Suppose I wanted to travel from Denver to Salt Lake City.  There is a route, the California Zephyr, that travels once a day between these two cities.  I would have to leave Denver at 8am, to arrive in Salt Lake City 15 hours later at 11pm.  I would also have to pay $65 dollars to do so.

In comparison, I can drive at 25 mpg and at $2.50/gallon gas from Denver to Salt Lake City, 545 miles, for $55 and only take about 8 hours to drive that.

Even better, I can find a $49 flight on Southwest that will get me to Salt Lake in only an hour and a half.

Why would I want to spend more money and more time traveling by train, when I can travel faster and cheaper by both car and plane?

(image credit)

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