A Tweet I saw earlier today got me thinking. Take a read and see what comes to your mind.
@The_Troy_Show “We will continue having meetings, everyday, until I find out why no work is getting done.”
This so clearly summed up what happens in many organizations. Meetings are scheduled because it’s the way things have been done, but no one stops and thinks about whether the meeting will be effective and efficient or whether there may be another way to accomplish the task(s) at hand. Organizations also don’t evaluate past meetings to see if they’ve met the same effectiveness & efficiency standards.
There are many books and experts on managing time and meetings (@chucbarnes is one of my favorites). So why aren’t people using this information?
I’ve always decided whether or not to attend a meeting by which of my body parts needs to be present in the meeting. It’s simple, if my mouth & brain need to be at the meeting, I attend, if only my ears need to attend the meeting, I check notes from someone else who attended.
That’s easy enough for me, I manage my own schedule. But why don’t managers show respect for their employees’ time by giving them the same rule? If employees don’t want to attend a meeting, then they don’t see the value, or something else holds more value at the time. Managers need to make sure the meeting has value (and don’t use spin…employees can see right through it). Many meetings do impart valuable information, but when there are too many meetings on the schedule, people have difficulty discerning which ones are important.
Meetings need to be assessed for effectiveness the same as any other activity within an organization. Listen to employees. They can probably tell you which meetings are the good ones.
