Many business people and consultants are workaholics. Even more are meetaholics. They appraise their importance and success with the number of meetings they attend. The more meetings, the more important they feel. Rushing from one meeting to the next and they feel they do a great job. Tight schedule without lunch break or – even better – double booked and they got their ultimate job satisfaction. They just forget one thing. An important one: Too many meetings might kill productivity. Just sitting in a meeting does not necessarily generate any value or result. And since each consultant loves the phrase “ROI”: Any time spent in a meeting should actual give a return on investment.
Avoid sitting in meaningless meetings. Eliminate purposeless meetings. Prevent wasting time. Start with rule #36: Skip meetings without an agenda.
Don’t accept a meeting request when the purpose isn’t clearly defined. Don’t go to meeting just to meet. Consider whether you could spent your time more effective.
Don’t invite to a meeting without a clear agenda. Don’t hold a meeting without informing the attendees in advance which things to be accomplished. Don’t initiate a meeting without giving the people a chance to be prepared.
No agenda – no meeting. That easy.
Credits to Andreas Bade at greenbird Integration Technology AS (http://www.greenbird.com) for notifying that one of the best known consulting secrets still was missing.
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