The problem with meetings….

I have decided to start the blog so that I can rant about how appalling most meetings are and also offer an alternative way of managing meetings to those that want to pioneer a different way of working.

One of my biggest frustrations is that people accept poor business meetings as being the norm. Most business managers spend so much time in meetings, you would think that meeting productivity would be higher on their agendas.

Work actually needs to happen in meetings for all large organisations these days. It is rare that a single person working in isolation is going to get the best results, given the complexity of business. In a productive meeting the sum is greater than the parts, i.e. the group gets far more done than they could each individually achieve in the same man days.

The most common problems in meetings are:

  • not keeping on track- people rambling on or getting diverted onto related but irrelevant topics * timekeeping – meetings rarely start on time and often run over time
  • taking over – dominant people lead the discussion and sway decisions
  • poor decision making – most meeting don’t have clear, explicit decision making processes
  • no commitment to decisions – because of poor decision making in meetings, decisions made often get undone after the meeting
  • conflict not addressed – so the real discussions that need to be had go unresolved

I could go on, but these are the most common ones!

If you recognise these and would like to have meeting in which these problems don’t occur, then come back to this blog to find out more.