Behance Tip: Our Action Addiction

I've been reading and using the products over at Behance for about 6 months now and I'm sold on the process and the team over there. Some of their articles recently have been more toward specific design industries since the public launch of Behance Network, but of the classics from March I've read on multiple locations. Tip: Our Action Addiction article breaks down the why behind this process and Tip: Measure Meetings With Action are two of my favorites from Behance. They made sense to me and I've tried implementing them into my life. I can say Action steps work. The Action books has been extremely helpful in planning design projects and keeping on task with Actions to be completed. Measuring Meetings with Action has three things that Behance follows that make sense to me:

Behance has come across a few habits of especially productive creative teams (from across industries) that we should all consider in our day-to-day work.

• Beware of "Posting Meetings." A meeting to “share updates” should actually be a voice-mail or an e-mail. Rule of thumb: if you leave a meeting without action steps, then questions to value of the meeting (especially if it is recurring).
• Abolish Monday Meetings. Gathering people for no other reason than "it’s Monday!" makes little-to-know sense, especially when trying to filter through the bloated post-weekend inbox. Automatic meetings end up becoming “posting” meetings.
• End With A Review of Actions Captured. At the end of a meeting, go around and review the action steps each person has captured. The exercise takes less than 30 seconds per person, and it almost always reveals a few action steps that were missed. The exercise also breeds a sense of accountability. If you state YOUR action steps in front of YOUR colleagues, then YOU are likely to follow through.

And when meetings end without any action steps, it is your responsibility to speak up and question their value. Just don’t plan a meeting to discuss it.

How often do you come out of a meetings and think to yourself did we accomplish anything? Probably a lot. But what if you did measure with action. Taking care of the "share updates" through email, phone calls, or memos and going into a meeting knowing things will be accomplish with actions will start the meeting off on the right foot. You'll be going into the meeting with specific things to discus and decide on. You'll leave the meeting with people assigned with action steps and those will be held accountable for those events. Less things fall through the cracks and everything that needs to be completed are completed. Just my thoughts.

Be sure to check out Behance they really do have their stuff together when it comes to productivity. Behance.com