This week’s focus:
Meetings, Meetings, Bloody Meetings
It is apparently estimated that there are around 3 billion meetings held every day across the world. That’s about one meeting per adult person aged between 18 and 65 – although lots of people must be having easy days judging by the number of meetings you attend every day, isn’t that right!
Worse yet, we waste so much time at meetings. I mean, how long are the meetings you attend, on average? One hour? Two? And how much of that time is really productive time? And yet, we seem to set up similar meetings at the slightest provocation.
A blog I read also contained the top 10 business meeting complaints – here they are:
- Disorganised rambling meetings
- People who interrupt peers and try to dominate the meeting
- Cell phone interruptions
- People who fall asleep in meetings (at no 4, that’s got to say something about the quality of the meetings we attend!)
- Meetings with no bathroom breaks
- Long meetings without refreshments
- People leaving early or arriving late
- People who check their Blackberries during meetings
- Meetings starting late
- No written recap of the meeting outcomes
So, here’s the question: which two of the above could YOU (this is not about you trying to change others!) improve to improve the quality of your meetings and reduce the time spent in meetings?
How about starting this week!
Monday Morning Perspective: “People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything”. – Thomas Sowell
