Dealing with an urgent issue – you don’t need to wait until your next scheduled meeting

When a forum member has an urgent issue to present and the group’s next meeting is not scheduled for sometime, consider arranging an emergency meeting.

Some guidelines:

• Since the purpose of the meeting is only to have a single presentation, it will be shorter, somewhere between 30-90 minutes long.
• It may be held either in person or via conference call.
• Because the meeting is scheduled on short notice, and in order to work for the presenter, attendance is optional, and missing the meeting does not count as an official absence.
• You can still follow the standard presentation format in this special meeting (e.g., coaching if time allows, communication starter, presentation, Q&A, experience sharing)

In the four years my forum has been in existence, we have had two emergency meetings of this type.  Both were arranged as conference calls on Saturday morning at 8:00 am because that was the time when we could get the most members.

Bob Halperin