In This Episode…
In today’s episode I share another successful meeting experience using my new approach to managing my preparation, contribution and follow up to them. I also share an interesting nugget of knowledge I picked up from a podcast that will help me embed my new behaviours as habits. Though it might take me as long as 2 months to do that.
Episode Transcript
Hi, and welcome to today’s episode of the profit productivity podcast. It’s your host, Michael tipper. Who else would it be now Today I have been continuing to work my evolving meeting strategy, and I had another meeting today and I applied the mind-mapping approach to taking my notes now because I had the template yesterday. They filled in, I had to recreate the template and it was a bit scrappy. It was quite untidy because I was in a bit of a rush when I did it. And I think I realized that I probably need to have this template able to print off so that I can just print it off, write on it, scan it in. And then that’s that. So I had the meeting, the agenda really helped started off with the outcome and it was with a potential client. So I said to them, okay, what’s the outcome
And he said was for me to decide whether I want to book you or not, which was quite clear up pretty, pretty certain of what the outcome was. So we didn’t have an agenda. We just talked about, we went straight into him explaining what the opportunity was. when the date was we checked availability. we looked at who the people is that he wants to speak for and then looked at what their needs are. And we discussed how I was going to, or high potential I could support him and what I would do for him and had a good conversation, came to, some actions, which is about me sending some links for things, for him to have a look at and, got quite clear on what the next steps were. So it worked, she worked really well. What I then did was I then straight away did an email, which quickly summarized, what we’d agreed, what he’d asked for.
And I sent over some links that he was going to look at and did it straight from that. So I didn’t have to go into my template that I put into Evernote, but what I have done is I have scan this into Evernote and then put the email text in it. So I’ve got it accessible and I can pick it up whenever I need to do so. So it’s there, but it still feels a little bit clunky. He’s not, friction-free such as it flows very easy and what’s still uncertain for me is what my followup activities, how I track the followup activities. So there was an extra on him to check a couple of links and he was gonna feed back to me. I was proposing a survey. Who’s going to feed back to me with some potential questions we might want to add to it.
so do I have an accountability system where I track the actions coming from other people so that I can see when they are, what they are when I expect them or should I just leave them into the meeting notes and go and check when I need to follow up on that Still not quite clear on what the way forward is. My over complication brain wants to create a new spreadsheet, such that I have every commitment other people make to me who it is when they made it, when they said they do what it is and then the ability to track it. I don’t know if that’s over-complicating is, I don’t know how I’d work that, but it’s something I’m going to think about whether that is necessary, because it would allow me to keep hold others to account more accurately with that.
But that’s a follow on thing I need to look at. As I evolve the system. Now, as an aside, I have been listening to Tom, bill, you with his impact theory interviews. And today it was an interview that he did with dr. Caroline leaf, who is an amazing woman, who is a specialist in understanding how to manage our minds. How so she’s a memory specialist, she’s a specialist in developing behaviors and it was fascinating listening to it. And the thing that struck me the most was she was talking about how we develop a habit and how we develop knowledge. So she entered a interchange, so description with both behavior and information and knowledge. so I need to go back and unpack it to make sure I’ve got it, got this right. But essentially she was saying that when we create new information in the brain, it forms a structure, physical structure in the brain, and it takes about 21 days to do that.
Because if nothing happens sort of 48 hours after we’ve learned something new, then it will deteriorate when actually form. But if we can strengthen, repeat, and it takes about 21 days to do that, then that’s a good thing. But what she also said, which ties in with my own experiences of learning and memory when I was teaching that information a few years ago, is that we need to come back and revisit that in order for it to become a, an embedded longterm memory that is always there and accessible for us. And that is, that is also true for whether that is information that we want to recall, whether it’s a habit and behavior we want to become automatic. And what she says, there are two cycles of 21 days. Now she talked about and taken 63 days for new knowledge and new habits to really embed in such that they are, they are there, but you need to riff.
You need to have revisited them at least every 21 days to make sure that reinforcement cycle was in place. Now, this also ties in with some research done. I think it was by university college London a few years ago, where they looked at how long it takes to form a habit. And the average was 66 days or 67 days. I’m going to have to go back and have a look. I think it was 66 days, which ties in with this, 63 days that she is talking about. So when it comes now back to the behaviors around meetings, I have got a clear idea about what I want to do. I’ve got some, if them behaviors in place, I’ve applied my system for it. And this is about the continuous improvement process. I’m in, at the moment of trying things out, seeing where they worked and evolving them now for this to become automatic, it’s going to take nearly two months according to what she says. So it’s an interesting insight. And it was interesting that it came to me today, or I discovered it today. My reticular activating system must have been looking for information about developing habits because I was listening to this and out it popped. So I’ve still some more work to do. So that’s those episode until tomorrow.
