{"id":6,"date":"2010-06-16T08:30:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T12:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2010-06-15T12:30:53","modified_gmt":"2010-06-15T16:30:53","slug":"people-don%e2%80%99t-want-to-be-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/?p=6","title":{"rendered":"People Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Want to Be There"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John J. Walters<\/p>\n

I think it was Charles Dickens who observed that rich folks (back in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the day\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) would pay good money to buy and maintain a horse and buggy to ride for pleasure, while they would turn up their noses at a delivery job that required them to drive one every day (and would pay them to do it).<\/p>\n

In the same way, employees everywhere complain about meetings, and yet when we all go out to happy hour after work, what exactly is it that we all talk about?\u00c2\u00a0 You guessed it — work!\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there might be a good amount of gossip in there too, but the fact is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to escape talking about something that you spend so much time focused on.<\/p>\n

The key difference here, besides the alcohol, is that there are no rules governing happy hour.\u00c2\u00a0 We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all free to stay as long as we please, and most of us choose to stay longer than the average meeting.\u00c2\u00a0 The interesting thing to note is that we could all rush home to do whatever it is we were daydreaming about all day.\u00c2\u00a0 But we choose to stay, and (often) to talk about work.<\/p>\n

Yes, there is a certain natural resistance to attending meetings, just as there is a certain natural draw to happy hour.\u00c2\u00a0 Most likely, this is because everyone has attended more than their fair share of ineffective and inefficient meetings, and so they assume that this will be the case with all meetings.\u00c2\u00a0 So, when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re scheduling a meeting, always remember that people don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sue Pelletier of meetingsnet.com<\/a> even went so far as to create a top-10 list of the best ways to drive her from a meeting<\/a>, and I have to say that I agree with all of them (and could probably add a few to the list).\u00c2\u00a0 As a service to you, the reader who probably doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t click hyperlinks, I have condensed the list into a brief list that I call\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

The Ten Commandments of Meetings<\/strong><\/p>\n