Most meetings are too long, too dull, too unproductive - and too much a part of corporate life to be abandoned.
I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.
Know when to email vs. when to meet. Logistics are best handled over a non-immediate communication channel like email or Asana tasks. Detailed status meetings will suck the life out of your day.
Trump conducts meetings and actually tries to get something done rather than just have the meeting and rather than just announce a framework and rather than just touch on bullet points or outline points and to speak in large terms about what our four-year objectives are. My guess is that Trump gets in there, rolls up the sleeves, and starts talking about actual work that's going to be done, things that he wants to do, things he believes the American people elected him to do. And I think it probably is a stark contrast for people who basically work in a bureaucracy.
The productiveness of any meeting depends on the level of thought given to the agenda in advance, and you should never leave a meeting without writing a follow-up list with each item assigned to one person. And go outside. All the big ideas are on the outside. You'll never have a creative idea at your desk.
The usefulness of a meeting is in inverse proportion to the attendance.
There is a simple fix to our excessive meeting culture, but it is not easy to implement. It's one of these things that are easy to say but hard to do. The fix is: abandon all recurring meetings. I am serious. All!
The central purpose of a chairman should be to ensure that the shortest possible time should elapse between the beginning of any meeting and its end.
Every discussion in a meeting has a diminishing curve of interest. The longer the discussion goes on, the fewer people will be interested in it.
Could Congress really do its work if it held its sessions by teleconferencing? Could the Supreme Court? Nothing can replace the spark of intelligence that travels from person to person at meetings.
Are your people uncomfortable during meetings and tired at the end? If not, they're probably not mixing it up enough and getting to the bottom of important issues.
The success of a meeting often depends on having the right documents - proofs, artwork, schedules, research charts, etc. - present at the start of the meeting. All too often we arrive like plumbers, leaving our tools behind.
