Kill Meeting Time Suck – How to make your meetings matter

Meetings get a bad rap. Yes, sometimes “this meeting could have been an email” or a Slack message. But there are plenty of times when a well-conceived, well-run meeting can save your team from creating the world's longest and most confusing message thread.

Many meetings though are neither well-conceived nor well-run. In particular, huge amounts of time are wasted because senior people call meetings and, because they are the senior person, they are not accountable for the productivity of the meeting. If this might be you, here’s how to fix it.

Two Facts:

  1. We can all do better in the management of our time.

  2. The literature on time management is plentiful, maybe even overwhelming. 

There is no shortage of tools. The challenge is not finding good ways to save time. The challenge is doing good things to save time.

Here are your first targets:

  • Clearly define the purpose of your recurring meetings.

  • Implement effective meeting protocols.  

  • Implement standard formats for commonly occurring written messages.

To implement:

  1. Spend an hour of research, focusing on ideas for your targets. 

  2. Socialize with your team a limited number of ideas. 

  3. Decide which three changes you will pursue.

  4. Commit to measure the results in some way. 

  5. Implement the changes.

  6. Measure the impact.


Afterwards:

  • Celebrate your progress.

  • Go back to Fact #1 above.

  • Adjust and improve.

You can run meetings that ultimately save time for you and your team. 


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