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How Chat and Youth Are Killing the Meeting
dominique_cimafranca writes "Forbes columnist Dan Woods describes a change in the way some companies handle meetings. Owing to instant messaging and younger tech-savvy CEOs, meeting time has gone down from as much as 30 hours per week to as little as 2 hours per week. Woods proposes ways to make this 'meetingless' management effective."
> meeting time has gone down from as much as 30 hours per week to as little as 2 hours per week
Bravo, Bravissimo. Many of us have been aware of time wasted on meetings for quite a while.
Let's be clear, planning is necessary and some meetings still might be needed. I guess almost everybody knows what I am talking about... ;-))
I am sure Dilbert hasn't got the monopoly on this topic but here are some links anyway...
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-11-23/
http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2001-12-15/
http://www.revold.no/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Dilbert_MeetingMadness.jpg
http://brontesaurus.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/dilbert-meeting.gif
http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/30000/1000/900/31967/31967.strip.gif
http://slcta.net/images/dilbert2007112223221.gif
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2008-11-05/
...these horrible technologies turn every hour of every day into an eternal meeting.
To succeed in the long term and at scale, stream-of-consciousness management must be supplemented in the following ways:
All of you using IRC and email now have experience in "stream-of-consciousness management". Don't forget or otherwise the resume scanners will pass you over and when you're in the first interview, the HR drone will say you don't have up to date skills and chuck your resume away.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Thirty hours of a forty-hour workweek devoted to meetings? I'm sure managers are getting nervous at the idea you can spend two hours a week on meetings and 38 hours a week getting stuff done.
Just like I have to show that I've gotten something done for the company in order to justify my paycheck, maybe it's time for the meeting-happy managers to show that their meetings have provided value to the company.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Technology, in and of itself, will not improve meetings. Effective management improves meetings.
Give a group of inefficient people an IM client, and they will be inefficient people IMing all day and interrupting.
I learned a lot about running meetings from effective managers and ineffective ones. My favorite example was a Senior VP for a regional bank. He held monthly meeting with all managers. Each manager was alloted time to speak. But you better damn well have something to say. Most managers passed time off to the next. Only the hihglights that really impacted the group as a whole got shared. Generally 15-20 people invited. Meetings 15-20 minutes. It was effective use of time, effective information. managers could seek each other out if they had other things to discuss.
Want to have good meetings?
* Invite only those that should be there. You don't need 3 marketing guys for your project kickoff meeting
* Above 8 or 9 invitees is a big fat warning sign.
* Have a written agenda. Circulate it beforehand.
* Have a hard end time to meetings. Make it intentionally shorter than it usually would go.
* Make decisions beforehand with the key people. Most decisions don't really get made in the big meeting. Two or three key decision makers on the same page and the rest follow or simply refine the decision.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Meetings are really dick-size wars. The manager that can call the most people to a meeting obviously has the biggest dick. And if you have to attend that meeting, your dick is smaller than his.
Once you get past the need for the ego boost, you notice that meetings drop off to almost nothing. No matter what the technology used, no matter what the industry.