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Making Meetings Matter

Written by: Clive Hook

Article Overview: How to make meeting matter more.

Making Meetings Matter

If you choose to be employed, and join an organization, there are two things you
can’t avoid. Firstly, you’ll have to be part of a team or group, and secondly, as a result, you’ll need to go to meetings.

Teams and meetings are the essential tools of getting work done for an organisation. You can’t do it on your own, and you have to talk to each other to
know what’s going on, who’s doing what, and where you fit into the plan. It
seems a tragedy or a crime, then, that meetings get such bad press.

You have to do them, but everyone cites them as a problem. Industry seems to be working with a broken tool, and making life difficult for itself. Many people now take “meeting malaise” to be as inevitable as death and taxes.

Meetings as a drain on resources

Research points to similarly sad situations on a global scale. British Telecom found “meeting overload'” had become a real issue, with the average
business professional participating in 559 meetings a year – about 12 a week.
BT was pleased to announce it had saved £128m, by not having so many
meetings. This announcement alone suggests meetings were seen as a liability, and not an asset to the organisation’s work and strategic intent.

Meetings get in the way of work

In Australia, when 1,000 people were asked about meetings, nearly half the
people thought they didn’t need to be there; 29% of attendees said meetings
were a waste of time; and 44% said they prevented them from getting on with
their work… Thus, they saw meetings as something other than what they were
there to do.

More meetings or fewer?

I don’t want people to have fewer meetings, but I do want them to spend less time in the ones they attend, and for every minute to count for something. The meetings facilitation workshops I run are attended by people keen to transform meetings, and make their own and others’ jobs easier. They want to find out how to teach people to use their time together to best effect, not to treat the minutes and hours as a time-wasting ritual, or a necessary evil which will pass.

What a wonderful idea – a place where meetings only happen when they should, and people leave feeling better informed, involved and knowing which is the right direction. In short, making meetings matter.

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Article Tags: attendees, british telecom, broken tool, business professional, death and taxes, essential tools, global scale, jobs, malaise, many meetings, resources research, strategic intent, tragedy, waste of time, work in australia
Referred by: http://www.doyourownpr.com



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