It’s time to change how and why you do meetings

Most people will tell you they hate meetings.

They’re left over from the days of only being able to share information by being in the same room together.  We have so many more options today, but people insist on pretending it’s still 1940.  People are checking their email, intranets, wikis, dashboards, twitter, etc. while in the meeting, but whomever calls the meeting isn’t thinking about how to use those tools to eliminate the need for the meeting in the first place.

So do meetings still serve a useful purpose?

I’d say so, when strictly limited to gathering people to leverage their experience, knowledge, creativity, etc. in real time to collaborate and solve a problem together.  If you’re booking conference rooms and blocking everyone’s calendar just to share information, give status updates, etc., you’re wasting everyone’s time.  If you don’t care about wasting time, try calculating the accumulated wage cost for each meeting.  Make sure you’re sitting down before you add up the cost weekly, monthly and if you dare, annually.

Want to break the vicious meeting cycle?  Try this:

1. Only allow meetings to be scheduled during one or two time blocks each week (I suggest 2-4 hr blocks depending on team size).  By instituting a meeting time budget, you introduce prioritization into meeting scheduling and help everyone manage their time more effectively.
2. Only allow the agenda to be collaboration or problem solving.  If a meeting shifts to information sharing, status updates, etc., the agenda should immediately shift to how to use other communication tools to do such.  This becomes a self healing process and when done consistently, will eliminate the unnecessary meetings as appetites for information are being satiated by more effective means.