More on meetings

Jeffrey Philips joins me on the meeting high-horse.

Meetings are one of the few activities where a person can require the participation and attendance of others without a real justification or value proposition.  It has become almost de riguer to attend a meeting once invited, so few people miss a meeting they’ve been invited to, even if there’s little or no value for them.  The cost of these meetings is astronomical and the benefit in many cases unproven or non-existent.

I like his idea of:

We should create a tool which allows people invited to a meeting to express their 1) interest in the meeting 2) the value they think they can add to the meeting 3) whether or not they think a meeting is necessary (could this be handled some other way) 4) what their expectations are to receive from the meeting in terms of benefits.  It might be possible to do away with some meetings, hold smaller, more topical and specific meetings in some cases, and improve the definition and expected results of other meetings.

Remember:

“A meeting moves at the speed of the slowest mind in the room. (In other words, all but one participant will be bored, all but one mind underused.)”

Dale Dauten

Come on people it doesn’t need to be this way, please, I have better thing to do.