Meetings

I was thinking about the word that we use so freely in our extremely busy lives. We hear from our spouse, “I won’t be home early, I have a meeting to go to after work”, our friend tells us “can I call you back, I’m in a meeting“, we call to speak to the supervisor of the pizza joint to complain about the cold pizza that got delivered to you last night and get told “I am sorry but the supervisor is in a meeting“. I can go on and on but do you think that we are getting beyond ourselves with the necessity for so many meetings?

Popular Science’s website popsci.com does a series “Science Confirms the Obvious!”“We unearth the latest research that definitely, positively proves what you knew already—and tell you why it matters” One of the confirmations was “Too Many Meetings Make You Grumpy” The following is from that study:
The Study: “The relationship between meeting load and . . . well-being of employees,” Group Dynamics, March 2005
The Findings: Ever get the feeling that you’d get more work done if you weren’t constantly attending meetings to discuss all the work to be done? Two social scientists from the universities of Minnesota and North Carolina hypothesized that meetings are analogous to “hassles,” defined in stress-research literature as “annoying episodes in which daily tasks become more difficult or demanding than anticipated.” The psychologists analyzed diary entries from 37 meeting-prone midlevel university workers over one week. They found that days chock-full of meetings left employees feeling stressed, exhausted and burned out.
Why Bother? Employers take heed: Since beleaguered workers may perform poorly, be tardy, or quit, the authors suggest that “organizations be sensitive to the number of meetings employees are required to attend.” Managers could create “formal guidelines” for meeting necessity (presumably not drafted at a meeting). (exerpt taken from popsci.com)
How do you feel? Are meetings just a “waste of your precious time”? I don’t think so they should be. I do know however that depending on how well the outcome of the meeting will be is dependent on the following be rules of every meeting
Prepare thouroughly- an agenda is a must.
Set up proper meeting place- Must be condusive for the amount of attendees.
Assign a person to take notes-
Start and end on time- This will help with bordemn from the attendees
Have a facilitator- again to direct and redirect while following the agenda
Keep the meeting on task - going off on tangents or items off agenda will ruin an otherwise effective meeting.
So what about the meetings you attend, facilitate or organize? Are they to be catagorized as meetings or social gatherings? A social gathering is when you have a more relaxed atmosphere and state personal thoughts. A time to get to know one another or to share experiences. Save those times for when you have get-togethers for that specific reason. Keep the meetings focused and on task using the list above and you will see a dramic change in the quality and time needed to conduct great meanfull meetings.