Meetings are a pain in the neck for everybody with a neck. And they cost money too, which annoys shareholders. Clearly, we need to eliminate meetings, or at least reduce them to the point where they only bother shareholders.
I've conducted extensive research to solve the problem of meetings. Although I collected tons of survey data, I must admit that like many corporate surveys, I never actually analyzed the data, because I knew exactly what conclusions I wanted to reach, after thinking deeply for several minutes. Actually, I never even conducted the survey, because it seemed like such a waste since I had already decided not to analyze the data.
So here are six sure-fire ways to eliminate meetings, according to the survey I would have conducted, if I had actually done the survey and then actually analyzed the data.
- Get rid of half your conference rooms
- Conference rooms are without a doubt the leading cause of meetings. According to my calculations, removing 50% of the conference rooms will reduce meetings by approximately 50%.
- Forbid meetings on even-numbered dates
- Since getting rid of half the conference rooms eliminates half the meetings, we can painlessly eliminate the half of the meetings that would normally be scheduled on even-numbered dates. Um, wait. That won't work. Never mind.
- Eliminate any meeting whose main agenda item contains the words "review," "strategy," or "status"
- This includes items like Contract Review, Strategy Review, Project Status, and the dreaded Contract Strategy Project Status Review. These are usually the most painful drug-out affairs, and getting rid of them produces substantial economies that go straight to the bottom line, strategy-wise.
- Meetings are a
pain in the neck
for everybody
with a neck - Ban anyone with the title "director" (or above) from "sitting in"
- Banning these people not only saves them time, but also saves time for the people whose meetings into which they're sitting on, because as everybody knows, high-level sitters-in are the main cause of PowerPoint.
- Make four-wheel drive illegal
- A key element of meetings is the attendees. Making four-wheel drive illegal will keep many of them from attending in bad winter weather. In places where snow is rare, I advocate making automobile air conditioning illegal, just to be fair.
- Change daylight savings time
- Have daylight savings time only in months that contain either M, J but not R, or E but not T. Meeting attendance would fall rapidly, because studies I haven't done indicate that less than 30% of us could figure out which months, if any, would have daylight savings time. And no software company I know of could implement this algorithm without crashing Windows.
I have one final idea for the meetings we can't eliminate. They would be much shorter if we could all agree to agree with each other more often. So get everyone else to agree with you. Or maybe you can just agree with them. Whatever. Top Next Issue
Do you spend your days scurrying from meeting to meeting? Do you ever wonder if all these meetings are really necessary? (They aren't) Or whether there isn't some better way to get this work done? (There is) Read 101 Tips for Effective Meetings to learn how to make meetings much more productive and less stressful — and a lot more rare. Order Now!
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Related articles
More articles on Effective Meetings:
- The Fallacy of Composition
- Rhetorical fallacies are errors of reasoning that introduce flaws in the logic of arguments. Used either
intentionally or by accident, they often lead us to mistaken conclusions. The Fallacy of Composition
is one of the more subtle fallacies, which makes it especially dangerous.
- Speak for Influence
- Among the factors that determine the influence of contributions in meetings are the content of the contribution
and how it fits into the conversation. Most of the time, we focus too much on content and not enough on fit.
- On Facilitation Suggestions from Meeting Participants
- Team leaders often facilitate their own meetings, and although there are problems associated with that
dual role, it's so familiar that it works well enough, most of the time. Less widely understood are
the problems that arise when other meeting participants make facilitation suggestions.
- Pre-Decision Discussions: Facts
- The purpose of some meetings is reaching decisions. Because decision making can be difficult, familiarity
with the forms of contributions that can occur in such discussions is helpful. Their connection to facts
is critical.
- Exhibitionism and Conversational Narcissism at Work: I
- Exhibitionism is one of four themes of conversational narcissism. Behavior considered exhibitionistic
in this context is that which is intended to call the attention of others to the abuser. Here are six
examples that emphasize exhibitionistic behavior.
See also Effective Meetings and Effective Communication at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of miscommunications. Here's Part 2 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in communication under time pressure, emphasizing those that depend on content. Available here and by RSS on May 1.
- And on May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
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