Half Hour Meetings

We all avoid things we dislike, it’s in our nature. I am always trying to find ways of avoiding meetings.

It’s not that I don’t like interacting with people, it’s because I think that most meetings are waste of time. there are multiple reasons for this, and the primary one is lack of planning.

I work in a culture where an meeting agenda is a rare thing, meeting minutes are even rarer, people reading either minutes or agenda prior to a meeting are as common as an excited man in Ikea.

This lack of planning makes the whole thing drift along like a discarded quavers packet. As you may have picked up I’m definitely a task oriented individual.

The other issue I have with meetings are that they are always booked in 1 hour slots. It’s the default in the company Notes system and I’m sure that is a big reason for it.

Today I have five separate 1 hour meetings booked. Three of the meetings are update meetings on which there are few update because we have been off for nearly two weeks since we last met, I have no idea why one of the sessions even exists.

The one remaining meeting is with one of our senior managers. He has an attention span of less than 10 minutes. I have some information to communicate to him. I have structured it to fit into the 10 minute attention span I know that I will get from him. His PA has still booked an hour, and always does.

Perhaps we should all agree to 30 minute meetings so that we regain the focus that they deserve.

Perhaps I’m being too task oriented though, perhaps all of the other things we  talk about during our meetings are just as important as getting on with the task. Perhaps the meeting is the important thing and not the agenda.

Or perhaps not.