Management
6 Rules for Better Meetings
Your sitting at your desk, up to your arm pits in work, when suddenly the screen on your monitor flickers and comes to life. You hear a faint beep, and there it is! Someone?s scheduled you to attend another meeting. Not another one! They?ve got you going to so many meetings there?s no time to do the work you?re expected to do.
Ever calculate what an expensive waste of time most meetings can be? They almost always start late. And regardless of how late they start, someone always arrives later yet, so there?s that interruption to contend with. Then there?s the obligatory nonsense of first catching up on what everyone?s done since the last time you were together.
The next time you?re in a meeting with more than three people, start calculating the true cost of that gathering. For openers, think about how much each person there earns per hour. Add up those numbers, then multiply the total by 133 percent to get the true ?per hour cost? of having all those people cooped up in that room. By the way, that additional 33 percent is a generally accepted cost for fringes and bennies.
That makes the actual cost of a $30 an hour manager $40, a $300 an hour exec, lawyer or consultant now $400. Depending on who?s in the meeting, you could be looking at a total meeting cost of $1,000 an hour or more. That?s not unusual for gatherings of the high priced small fry. If any big wigs grace you with their presence, that cost goes much higher.
But as meetings usually do, yours last a good hour or more. The discussion wanders sometimes aimlessly as this person and that contributes a comment or question here or there, often not to clarify, but to make themselves noticed. Finally, the meeting ends, and everyone goes off to the projects they were attempting to complete before being interrupted by the meeting.
Yes, meetings are often considered little more than interruptions by those invited to attend, interruptions to the real work they?re expected to get done. And what do most meetings accomplish? Who knows? You?ll discuss that the next time you meet.
Ready for a better way? Here are six simple rules that together work extremely well in the real world:
1. No meeting can be scheduled without at least seven days advance notice.
2. Any time someone schedules a meeting, that person must also provide each invitee with an agenda for that meeting. This allows those invited an opportunity to prepare in advance.
3. That person must also assure someone is present at the meeting to take minutes ? accurate notes about who said what, what was agreed to, follow-ups, assigned responsibilities, etc.
4. Every meeting must start on time ? regardless of who may not yet be present. People quickly learn this rule after one or two such starts.
5. Within two business days following the meeting ? but only after being reviewed and approved by the person in charge of the meeting ? those minutes must be in the hands of all who were present or who are otherwise involved.
6. Finally, no meeting is to last more than 40 minutes. Why? Because some great philosopher is credited with having said, ?The mind can only tolerate what the fanny can.?
Those rules, by the way, were not designed to make it difficult to hold meetings. Efficiency is the goal. And they do accomplish that. Try it and see for yourself.
? 2006, Philip A. Grisolia, CBC Phil Grisolia is an accredited Certified Business Communicator (CBC), author, educator, business coach, and an award-winning copywriter. To learn more about Phil and the types of help he provides for his clients, visit him at http://PhilGrisolia.com. While there, sign up for a free subscription to his best-in-class newsletter, Making Sense of Marketing?. |
Phil Grisolia
Tags: meetings, committees, task force, study group, study groups, Similar articles
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