Meetings, the fewer the better

Wasted meetings cost the US $400Billion last year,

Hello,
Hope October is going well for you. For me, classes are going well. Students are excited to be back in person, just finished first set of exams and papers. 

Was on a podcast recently where two side were debating the pro/con of synchronous meetings.

1) Listen to the podcast here.  You'll like it.  The first voice is mine where I seem to uniformly call all meetings boring.  Oh, sorry. . must be thinking outloud.

2) Yes, there are too many meetings. A few blog posts I've written on why I think this:

• Elon Musk: “Walk out of a meeting. . . “

• Meeting minutes, 8 reasons to write up those notes

• Peter Drucker said, “Meetings are a symptom of bad organization. The fewer the meetings the better”

3) It's also been fun to get feedback from people I know, trust, respect on the importance of meetings. I am not a misanthrope, I do believe there are some good reasons for meetings: 

• Building trust, alignment, and problem-solving together

• Brainstorming, early-stage innovation

• Smoothing over misunderstanding, and being a human

• Getting to know new people; creating a foundation for a relationship

• Having fun, experience serendipity

However, I believe we should hold a high standard for meetings. Namely, 

1. Invite only people critical to the meeting; for everyone else, send meeting minutes

2. Send the materials, pre-reads in advance

3. Set a clear agenda of the goals, expected outcomes

4. Give people the opportunity to "opt-out" by doing work, helping out in other ways

5. Type up clear meeting minutes when finished

6. Ensure that action items are completed, so it's not groundhog day

Consultants need meetings to get things done, so trust me, I know some of this might sound heretical.  Feel free to give feedback/pushback after listening to the podcast here. 

John 

jkstrategy@consultantsmind.com