Meetings can be the most expensive waste of time within your organization. On the other hand, they can be the most effective strategic platform for collaboration and sustaining your competitive advantage in your market. So with those two extremes representing either potential failure or incredible potential for innovation, pay attention to Paul Axtell’s great post:
There are specific complaints that can be tackled, however. When I ask people in the workshops I lead what they most want help with, five issues consistently come up:
- One or two people dominate the conversation and no one does anything about it.
- My boss doesn’t lead meetings effectively.
- Most of our meetings are just passing along information that could easily be sent in an email. We don’t talk about real issues.
- No one is paying attention because they’re on their phones or laptops.
- We keep having the same conversations because nothing gets done between meetings.