by John J. Walters<\/p>\n
The past two weeks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked about how meetings generally suck<\/a>, and that most people who are there would rather be anywhere else<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 A quick search of the web will show that there are indeed other people who think meetings suck — and are talking about it!<\/p>\n One of them is Sue Pelletier, whose list of her top ten reasons to bolt from a meeting<\/a> was the focus of last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s post.\u00c2\u00a0 This week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seed article is a very well written piece<\/a> by Craig Borysowich<\/a> about the importance of keeping your eyes on the prize when it comes to meetings.<\/p>\n It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no secret that one of the keys to a good meeting is having an agenda so everyone starts off at the same point and on the right foot.\u00c2\u00a0 The quality of feedback will vary greatly between a meeting where everyone sits down prepared and one where nobody knows what the topic is until they see the first power point slide.<\/p>\n Can you imagine asking a teacher to waltz into a classroom and teach a class on a topic of your choice without any preparation whatsoever?\u00c2\u00a0 They might be able to pull it off if all the conditions are right.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps they have a good grasp of the chosen subject, or maybe they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been to a particularly informative seminar on a similar topic.\u00c2\u00a0 But the odds that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll stumble around and generally confuse the students are much greater the less preparation you allow them.<\/p>\n Holding a meeting without an agenda, or even with a brief or vague agenda, is kind of like that, except there are multiple teachers in the room.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone is expected to both inform and be informed; participation is mandatory.\u00c2\u00a0 There are often large costs (in terms of lost productivity) associated with everyone leaving the meeting and going off on their own to relearn everything they were supposed to learn during the meeting, if this is even possible.<\/p>\n Yes, the stakes are high, but luckily one of the best ways to mitigate the risk that everyone will leave the room saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well that was a complete waste of my life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is also quite simple.<\/p>\n When planning a meeting, write down everything you want to get accomplished.\u00c2\u00a0 Send this list out to all attendees and ask for their input.\u00c2\u00a0 Revise this into a solid agenda for the meeting and send it out a few days prior so everyone can show up prepared. \u00c2\u00a0If you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do all this, then maybe it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to rethink why you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re scheduling the meeting in the first place.<\/p>\n In a nutshell: plan meetings with the agenda right from the start.\u00c2\u00a0 Get input, listen to it, and start the process early enough so there are no surprises.<\/p>\n I know this sounds like it may take a bit more time and preparation than your standard meetings, but maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why standard meetings tend to suck so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John J. Walters The past two weeks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve talked about how meetings generally suck, and that most people who are there would rather be anywhere else.\u00c2\u00a0 A quick search of the web will show that there are indeed other people who think meetings suck — and are talking about it! One of them is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}