Taming the Meeting Beast

During a presentation last week someone told me that they had a big backlog of work, but they could not get it done because of all their meetings.

I don't know when meetings became barriers to getting things done. I remember when it was a way to get things done. Normally you would have a problem that required a smart team to solve, so you would get a team together.

Now whenever some issue is raised, you need to meet to discuss it. So here are a few rules to follow in order to tame the meeting beast:

1) If a meeting is scheduled and the meeting organizer did not supply an agenda (With scope, discussion items, responsible parties and time allocated), then it's just a social event. Think of it at as an opportunity to get caught up with your co-worker's vacation plans and family life. Joy!

2) If your in a meeting and nobody is assigned to take minutes and distribute to attendees afterwards; then the meeting never happened. No really, what meeting? I don't know what your talking about, I think I was in a room with some finance folks, but I had to leave early to...go to another meeting.

3) If you had an agenda, and there are minutes being taken, but at the end if the meeting there are no follow up items, tasks with assignments and time frames: It was a one time event. Maybe the follow-up or task was real work to be done and the completion task included an email report. Great!

The most evil function in Outlook is the ability to schedule "recurring times" for meetings. It's just too easy to tie up all of your senior leadership with standing meetings. My favorite pastime during meaningless meetings is to count the attendees, take a SWAG of each of their salaries, then divide it by the hour. You just figured out your direct cost of the meeting. Then you can really get creative and figure opportunity costs of each attendee doing what their regular job requires.

So here is your take away:

1) No agenda=Social Event.

2) No minutes: It never happened.

3) No follow up: It was a one time event.