Meetings: Is Your Meeting Necessary?

Is there really a need to have a meeting? I mean, REALLY need one? Can the meeting objectives (if there are any) be accomplished through a memo, email, or a phone call to someone? When you schedule a meeting, it’s like you’re going to the organization and asking them to fund a project. Your asking people to set aside time and they only have so much to give. In the book Meeting Excellence, the first chapter is titled, “Is This Meeting Necessary?”. That IS the question! In Read Before Our Next Meeting, Pittampalli says that people can read, so send them a memo! People should do work BEFORE the meeting and make decisions AT the meeting.

Making a withdrawal from the ‘time bank’ of the company is a big deal. Have too many meetings and you might get someone laid off. 30minutes doesn’t seem like much. Multiply that times hundreds of employees who think the same and go ahead and schedule that meeting and that’s some serious time/money. Your bias should be to not have the meeting. In today’s meeting culture the bias is to have the meeting. And today’s meeting culture is killing us.

DO: Pick up the phone and call someone instead of having the meeting!

DO: Can you leverage some social media in the company to have the dialog, list a discussion forum, company twitter like tool?