New Year’s Resolutions to End Boring Ineffective Meetings
Improve your meeting productivity with some effective meeting resolutions.
Why risk another year of spending weekends and late work days doing the work you should have been doing all day? Sick of endless meetings getting in the way? Then it’s time for some resolutions to take back your life and productivity.
1) I resolve to refrain from creating time-wasting meetings that have no focus. For my agenda, I will communicate a clear objective and desired outcome for every meeting I host.
2) I resolve to set a default meeting length that’s less than one hour. (Who wrote the rule that meetings have to be 30 or 60 minutes, anyway?) People tend to (needlessly) fill the hour when they have it available. Instead, schedule 15-minute meetings so you get in, get to the point, and get out fast.
3) I resolve to avoid holding meetings solely to review material. I reserve meeting time strictly to resolve issues, develop initiatives, and interact creatively. If a review is needed, I will have others send it to me rather than host or attend a meeting for that purpose.
4) I resolve to prepare privately before a meeting, not in front of the attendees. If I want people to invest their time in my meeting, I’d better invest my time preparing to lead it effectively.
5) I resolve to insist on “no meeting Fridays” (or Mondays if you prefer) to allow people to use these days to get things done for the week. No one wants to spend Sunday night doing catch-up on Friday work that missed due to an abundance of meetings.
6) I resolve to never fall for the “what’d I miss?” demise, knowing that reiterating what’s already been said wastes everyone’s time.
7) I resolve to use my phone or tablet productively while I’m in a meeting. (Truth is, if I’m engaged, I won’t even want to be on my phone. But if I’m subjected to useless babble that could have been emailed, I’m working on something else.)
8) I resolve to stop inviting people to meetings when they could have been informed of results via email. I won’t be influenced by the “over-invitation syndrome.”
9) I resolve to refrain from hosting or attending “do-over” meetings because nothing came out of the first one.
10) I resolve to find creative alternatives to conference calls as an instant answer to everything.
Bonus: I resolve to stop suffering in silence and allowing these abuses to proliferate through our organization!
Hope you enjoy….and Happy New Year!
Jon
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