Пособие по переводу английской научно-технической литературы. Орлова Г.Д. - 164 стр.

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Making Meetings Count

Most meetings are poorly structured and are a waste of time. An effective meeting

has a precise and brief agenda, a definite objective, a specific time period for

completing the work at hand, and participants who have a need to be present.

To make sure your meetings are meaningful, decide on the what, why, when, who,

where, and how long. With answers to these questions, you can decide if a meeting is

necessary and, if so, what the agenda should cover.

An important part of a meeting is keeping and publishing the minutes. Sometimes

a junior attendee is appointed to keep the notes and write the minutes. This may be

adequate. But if the meeting is important and the results have to be clearly stated

without confusion, you may have to keep the minutes yourself. Otherwise, you run the

risk of misunderstood conclusions.

If a subordinate is used, make sure you see and edit the final draft before the

minutes are published. The minutes must accurately reflect the decisions made at the

meeting.

Interfacing With Other Departments

Engineering must interact well with both marketing and manufacturing; the less

formal the interface, the better. Engineering designs are rarely perfect, marketing

forecasts are usually off, and manufacturing often misses tolerances or schedule dates.

But unless these three groups work closely together, they become separate outposts,

each one blaming the other two for mistakes or omissions.

Interface problems can be solved best if responsibility for matters of common

concern is shared by members of each group. For example, a designer might discuss a

stamping design with a tool engineer before he makes final drawings. Or, a marketing

manager might touch base with the chief manufacturing engineer about potential

changes in product mix before changing production plans.