Today’s guest in the Winning Teams podcast is a lady who hails from Brooklyn. She is Mamie Kanfer Stewart, the founder of Meeteor a company whose mission is to help people and organizations work smarter and have more effective meetings. Mamie is also a co-author of the book, Momentum: Creating Effective, Engaging and Enjoyable Meetings.

Mamie is a mother of two kids and enjoys several interesting hobbies such as knitting, fine Trapeze, and rock climbing. After college, she worked in her family’s business called GOJO and ran their philanthropic work. Through that, she learned about how teams work and how organizations function.

When she left that position to do her own thing, she realized that not every organization has the same wonderful practices as GOJO. She launched Meeteor, initially as a tech firm. However, she recognized that instead of software development, the development of people is much more important, with a focus on effective meetings.

Now, they train, coach and work with people to develop skills to help them have effective meetings and improved collaboration. Find out the full story here.

 In this episode, Mamie shares with us:

 

•         Key blocks to effective meetings.
•         Changing the mindset of people to be “prepared in advance” for the meeting.
•         Shift your thinking from “Why are we meeting?” to “What will this meeting accomplish?”
•         The three different kinds of meeting participants.
•         Right culture around technology in meetings.
•         Breaking the cycle of “meeting after meeting after meeting…” inbred habit and routine.
•         Direct the meetings to a clear “Northstar” to avoid getting lost on tangents.
•         Don’t be too internally focused – think through the perspective of your actual customers, stakeholders, etc.

 

Book Recommendation, Habits and Where to Get in Touch:

 

If you want to really redo your meeting culture, Mamie recommends Where the Action Is by Elise Keith. She believes that this book is very different and complementary to the book she wrote. It has helped her think differently about the meeting culture.

Mamie’s cornerstone daily ritual is going through her to-do list at her desk. On Monday mornings, she goes through the entire to-do list and figures out what needs to happen that week and tag them “This Week”. Each morning, she tags anything that needs to be done today with “Today” from her “This Week” list.

Mamie writes down her to-do list on paper and puts it on her digital tool. She likes that it is always visible right next to her. It makes her happy to check things off either on the paper or her digital tool.

You can find out more about Mamie’s business at www.meeteor.com. Her podcast, blog and other coaching work are at www.mamieks.com.