Meetings about meetings?

I can't say I ever recall seeing people jump for joy when realising they have a meeting to attend. Personally, I find them generally unproductive and time wasting, we seem to have entered into a professional culture of having meetings for the sake of having meetings.

Here are a few steps to making your meetings more effective and less a waste of productive time;

1. All meetings must have a stated purpose or agenda. Without an agenda, meetings very quickly turn into aimless social gatherings rather than productive working sessions.
2. Attendees should always walk away with actionable tasks. In fact if there are no tasks that are derived from a meeting the meeting should be seen as time wastage.
3. Stick to your end time and be strict about it, no meetings should ever overrun.
4. Slightly more extreme: remove chairs from boardrooms and meeting rooms, people will get to the point if they are not completely comfortable.

Craig Vallis said...

5. Don't accept meeting requests that are frivolous or have no defined outcome, or if your contribution is going to be nil.

If you have any ideas, please do comment and share your ideas of how to get the most out of meetings and I'll update the post - you'll even get a sneaky mention! :)