Every hour of a meeting with eight people present represents an eight hour workday, the investment of a full “Man-Day”. Was value created or dissipated?

Meetings can be productive…but rarely are. Productivity requires:

  1. Tight agenda and leader who keeps the discussion FOCUSED
  2. Relevant materials distributed sufficiently prior to allow for review, basic questions and answers
  3. Proper preparation by participants (during a meeting is no time to absorb complex spreadsheets/documents)
  4. Take Home/Closure: What was decided, what was assigned to whom to complete by when for what goal?
  5. Follow Up: Did all those wonderful things actually happen? Did the Targeted Activity Actually Achieve the Desired Result?

Closing Quotes:

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings’.” – Dave Barry, b.1947

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, 1908-2006, Harvard Economist

“Too many meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer meetings the better.” – Peter F. Drucker, 1909-2005, Business Guru

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier