Let’s Give Meetings a Kick in the Pants!

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What It’s About: Many details about daily work have been under reconsideration through the last 18 months. Perhaps meetings should be in the crosshairs for review as well. Why? So many meetings just plain suck. Too often, they have no clear purpose, a poor process, and few meaningful outcomes. Unfortunately, the prime benefactor is mostly the meeting convenor. (Usually, the boss).

So What?: The meeting can be considered a relic of industrial management. Ask yourself how much value is being created by having each one you’re involved in? If the easy answer is “lots of value,” by all means, keep participating in them. When they are highly productive, participants know the purpose of the gathering, what they’re going to do to meet objectives and then commit to doing so. This includes follow up and learning. Do they need to be synchronous? Is personal attendance really necessary? Does every meeting need to be in one hour increments? Should all be recorded? Documented?

Now What?: Please move forward with a healthy review of all meetings. If you look at your calendar, and spend more than 25 percent of your time in meetings involving more than three people, you may be stuck in meeting quicksand. Time to kick all your meetings in the pants, and see what happens. Meetings, as we often currently conduct them, are calendar activities more than value producing processes. Kick 'em in the pants again .

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

One Millennial View: I’ve both loved and loathed meetings throughout my career. Sometimes, they’re irreplaceable in terms of how productive and great they are. More often (especially over Zoom), I can’t wait for them to conclude. I’d ask these questions:

1. Can the material be communicated/answered via questions over email or documents? If so, what are we doing here?

2. Are we all walking away with a new task/purpose, and how to do it?

3. Is it an uplifting/motivating/fun way to connect before content, and are participants engaged?

If the meeting doesn’t tackle these three things, then I don’t want to be there, and spoiler, neither does anyone else.

- Garrett

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis

Let’s Give Meetings a Kick in the Pants!

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