The last few weeks since the start of the new Year, I have focused a lot of my time in doing one-on-one meetings with my colleagues.

It was something that I only started the last few years.  Before in the interest of efficiency, I would normally hold group meetings of anywhere between 5 to 20 people.  It would normally be a group discussion.  No, it was too big a waste of time to meet people one by one.
But lately, I have found out that there are circumstances that merits one on one meetings.  When you meet somebody and only talk to him for the whole half hour, it says something to him or her — I am important, and I have the undivided attention of my manager and  boss. You get to share things you normally would not talk about when there are others in, and there is really a ‘connection’.  At the end, such is the way you build organizations - one at a time.

I have also lately been doing that to my kids.  I have 3 kids, and normally, we would play with them all together, and we would spend time together.  But lately, my wife and I have tried something different - Sometimes I travel with my second kid, sometimes I bring my eldest kid to dinner.  Sometimes, I just talked to my last kid — as if at least on that time being, he was my only kid.  Such kind of undivided attention, I believe, gives them the kind of feel good that you could not get if you constantly have to deal with them all three together.

One on One meetings — not very efficient, but very effective!