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Meetings Make You Dumber
Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."
Perhaps SOME meetings are not meant to be creative, and are just for information sharing but many meetings ARE meant to be creative. Many meetings are intended for problem-solving, for example, and creativity can be quite useful so you don't want to stifle it.
I work at an ad agency where by definition we have Creative Meetings where creative concepts are going to be brainstormed.
Meetings are not all simply to seek consensus, etc...
But the Reality is that most meetings suck, are mis-managed and a waste of time. Why these things are true does not matter. They are and they aren't going to change.
So, avoid meetings as much as possible. Use email and the telephone and finally, talk to people in their cubicles/offices. Use the one-to-one means of communicating as much as possible. People will give you more information and more SENSITIVE information in person than they will in a group.
Once you have all of that and you've run through the email/telephone/cubicle cycle a few times, then call a short meeting to make sure that everyone sees everyone else agreeing in public to what they've agreed to.
Meetings suck. Avoid them.
The problem is that in a meeting you are on a social and political stage, however small. It's often not just about what idea is best, but rather whom you're going to support (for reasons that may have nothing to do with the idea being discussed) and how you want the group to perceive you. I know that on more than one occasion I've kept my doubts about a proposal to myself because I didn't want to be perceived as, well, a doubter (which really I am)...