8 props to Spice Up your Business Meetings!

Statutory Caution: This blog is rated CG+ and may contain content not suitable for all. Reader discretion is advised.

We all love to hate meetings. Especially the ones that go on and on endlessly without any end in sight. Here are some tips to spice up your business meetings and stay on top always :-). Pun unintended.

Designer Notepad

I have been chided more than a dozen times because my peers can’t bear the in consistent clacking of my laptop, next to them. And admittedly, I jab at the keyboard like a rodeo prodding the bull out of the bullpen..The exercise of writing, keeps me alert because I often forget how to spell some very business terms. Maybe its Anmesia :-)

Caution: Don’t overdo the writing. Just keep practicing morse codes or acronyms or just scribble vernacular profanities. That will do. Don’t doodle though.

Thrilling Interpol Chase

I learnt this one at the annual conferences I have had the privilege to attend. And my 5 feet nothing height does little, to help me see clearly beyond a few vertical feet. So I pretend Interpol is after me, as I whizz past the crowd looking super intense and angrily busy. Presumably they think I am the designated speaker or something equally bizarre and let me get inside the meeting sessions.

Caution: You may try this at your risk :-). Also, chivalry may be scarce this season..

Bespoke Eyewear!

It instantly implies your heightened interest in the data being shared. If you don’t have reading glasses, then please stand up and pace towards the projected slide. The extra exercise will release endorphins that will make you instantly alert.

Caution: Jumping up without practice may be harmful to your knees, so please do so with care. I don’t know if my company’s insurance covers arbit reverse squats :-).

Game of Thrones

Basically your team needs to sync watches with you to ensure they enter the meeting room at practiced intervals. All, to whisper sweet nothings in your ears, while looking extremely serious and carrying sheafs of research articles. You also need to look at your gadgets with practiced concern and visible shock, to allow you get out of those meetings for well meaning breathers.

Caution: Have the team share with you relevant research. You don’t want colleagues to glance at the research to find out that its really the hotel prices for the dream vacation you wanted to take.

Vegan fashionista

Ok so you didn’t hear this from me. If you really want to be excused from the meeting, just munch on raw onions. I know what you may think. The onion breath may cause your colleagues swoon in involuntary asphyxiation, and that you may be called to take them to the nearest hospital. No. The raw onions could really make you so sick that you may genuinely be excused from the meeting.

Caution: If you do have a good gastro history, chances are that the onions may not do the trick. Then all you are left with is onion breath when the handsome media planner from the agency walks in to chat with you on the budgets you approved. Oh! The halitosis induced misery ….

Tour de Finance!

This is a no brainer. Use the bookmarks to select your favorite metrics like Pre Tax NP margin or Drip Pricing etc and use these at more than regular intervals. Interrupt your CFO and keep insisting why those ratios should be less or more than what you see on the presentation.

Caution: Your CFO could catch the hack all too soon. Keep alternating between legal, finance and commercial jargons to keep the CFO engaged. Next time pick someone else maybe HR or Legal or Marketing.. Innovate.

Whiteboard Victory dash

Every meeting needs a willing assistant with an on -demand whiteboard marker who can, at all times, make the 20 meter dash to the whiteboard to write down the key points. That saves you in a sense from actively requiring you to say anything remotely intelligent, in case you didn’t get time to prep for the meeting.

Caution: You are dead meat if you mistakenly carried the permanent marker instead. Then you are likely to spend the rest of the meeting, trying to erase it from the board using nothing but your shirt ends or sleeves :-)

The A- Bomb

The Arbit- Bomb. This one is a winner all the time. I have seen experts throw it at many a discussion with practiced ease. This involves making an extremely inane and random comment while the others are engrossed in a discussion. That throws the discussion off the kerb.

Caution: Unless you have practised this relentlessly, do not indulge. Throwers often find this explode in their face by some one telling them to simply shut up. It has to be done subtly and no one should know who threw it. Keep at it.

Too many hacks doth spoil the meeting broth.. So in this very unselfish debate around who has the best hacks, your contributions are eagerly awaited. While you do that, that I am just going to rely on coffee to keep me from nodding off in my next meeting.

What’s your secret sizzle for Business Meeting stardom?

PS: CG is Corporate Guidance .

Author is not liable for trauma (emotional or physical) caused during the implementation of these hacks by willing readers :-)