Meetings Don’t Make You Better

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings…  Many people believe that Meetings Make Them Better.  Because of this belief system they will have a lot of meetings and will even schedule a meeting to schedule meeting.  This belief system is inaccurate and unproductive.  Often time’s meetings are unnecessary, unproductive and make you worse.  You just sit around and talk instead of believing in your people and releasing them to go Get er’ Done!

Don’t get me wrong there can be some amazing epiphanies that come out of meetings.  They key is to understand that it’s not the process of the meetings that breeds success it’s the strategy, confrontation, dialogue, thinking and ultimately the implementation of what I call “Success Plans” that ultimately creates the success.   These Success Plans vary from individual to individual and organization to organization.

Meetings Don’t Make You Better, Success Plans Do!

Meeting is defined as – the act of coming together.

Strategy is defined as – a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or strategy for obtaining a specific goal or result.

Meetings Don’t Make You Better, Strategy and Success Plans Do.

If teams and organizations would focus more on the implementation of their “Success Plan” and less time meeting, their results would be exponentially greater.  The bottom line is that meetings cut into our time, which happens to be our most valuable resource.  A good first step in implementing a Success Plan is to change the way you do meetings.

Below are some strategies to create more opportunities for success and less time for meetings.

• If a meeting is regularly scheduled for 1 hour, change it to 45 minutes.
• If you can handle it with a brief water cooler chat; don’t schedule a meeting.
• Require only the necessary people to attend particular meetings
• Conduct a quarterly meeting assessment. (What’s working, what’s not, changes…)
• Discourage unnecessary surfing the web, e-mailing, chatting during the meeting.
• Know your employees and facilitate types of meetings that motivate them.
• Change the setting – Starbucks, Golf Course, Restaurants, Outside, Different location…
• Get rid of the PowerPoint presentations; too much prep time and nobody cares.
• Get everyone involved; encourage everyone’s contribution.
• If an email or video will serve the purpose, don’t call a meeting.
• Ask your employees to honestly evaluate the productivity of the meetings.
• Don’t get me started on conference calls.

Share your thoughts and experiences with meetings.  Do they make you better?