by John J. Walters
This is what Steve Tobak says meetings do. Actually, the full quote from his excellent article (incidentally entitled that same thing as our parent site’s motto) is:
Meetings are how conflicts are resolved and plans are agreed upon. They are how critical strategic and operating processes are developed, managed, and to some extent, executed.
He’s definitely on to something, here. After all, if meetings were always ineffective time-sinks where nothing of any real value happened we would have phased them out by now, much like our own bodies are slowly ridding themselves of the appendix. But we haven’t, and unfortunately we never will.
Sure, technology may change, allowing us to update our meetings. We’ve seen a good amount of this already — from the conference call (which allowed us to bore each other from far away) to PowerPoint (which allowed us to keep attendees awake with flashy graphics and annoying sound effects). But the basic idea remains the same: someone thinks they have something to say or discuss so they haul a bunch of their colleagues into a room at the same time and have at it. Wonderful.
While information technology has developed to the point that meetings nowadays could be about as interesting as the movies people paid good money to see back in the day, they usually are far from it. Why is that? Because leading a good meeting requires preparation and a willingness to stay on track that many people simply don’t have.
Tobak lists some short, sweet, and to-the-point rules for running and participating in effective meetings (which I won’t recopy because you can easily click here if you’re curious). Basically, they come down to three things:
1) Be sure to have a good reason to organize or participate in a meeting; make sure everyone who will be there knows what this is before they walk in. Be punctual and brief. Remember that an ounce of preparation is worth a lot more when everyone is finally assembled.
2) If you’re running a meeting, make sure to stay on topic and in control. If you’re participating in a meeting, make sure to defer to the meeting creator. The same rules of etiquette apply here as elsewhere in the world, but are even more important as you are in a business setting.
3) The meeting doesn’t end when everyone walks out the door. Communication about what has been decided during the meeting is absolutely crucial to ensuring it gets put into action. Getting this information out in a timely fashion is the meeting creator’s responsibility; abiding by it is a task for everyone.
To sum it up: there are three equally important parts to a meeting. Organization, execution, and following up. It’s not rocket science (few things are), but it is something that takes practice. Luckily, we live in a time when technology is always here to help us.