For whatever reasons, some organizations are in the throes of a Meeting Problem, and it is life-threatening. Seth Godin has tips for managing your meeting problem:
*Understand that all problems are not the same. So why are your meetings? Does every issue deserve an hour? Why is there a default length?
*Schedule meetings in increments of five minutes. Require that the meeting organizer have a truly great reason to need more than four increments of realtime face time.
*Require preparation. Give people things to read or do before the meeting, and if they don’t, kick them out.
*Remove all the chairs from the conference room. I’m serious.
*If someone is more than two minutes later than the last person to the meeting, they have to pay a fine of $10 to the coffee fund.
*Bring an egg timer to the meeting. When it goes off, you’re done. Not your fault, it’s the timer’s.
*The organizer of the meeting is required to send a short email summary, with action items, to every attendee within ten minutes of the end of the meeting.
*Create a public space (either a big piece of poster board or a simple online page) that allows attendees to rate meetings and their organizers on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of usefulness. Just a simple box where everyone can write a number. Watch what happens.
*If you’re not adding value to a meeting, leave. You can always read the summary later.
March 31st, 2009 at 6:45 pm
I’m hoping one of the casualties of a cruddy economy is that we cut down on meetings. Either no one can afford to look unbusy for that long, no one can afford to do unbillable things (like unproductive meetings), or there’s so much work to be done since all our coworkers have been laid off that we make meetings as brief and effective as possible.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:21 am
That is a very hopeful thought.