Marks Meeting Message

About once every year or so I feel compelled to remind people about how dangerous meetings have become to American business. Like so many Dilbertian characters, some people have literally made a career out of attending meetings. So once again, here are my suggstions for managing effective meetings:

1. Meetings should have a start time and a stop time. I once had a client tell me they wanted a system on the wall that identified the cost of each employee in the room multiplied by the time spent during the meeting to be reflected in a cost clock on the wall. Cool idea.

2. People should be on time for the meetings, that is simply out of respect for other peoples time. But the meeting start does not shift just because choose to not be on time (exceptions probably granted to certain royalty, and egomaniac CEO's).

3. Meetings begin and end on time.

4. A meeting should have an agenda, and that agenda should be communicated prior to the meeting in order for the attendees to be well prepared for the meeting.

5. The meeting should have a facilitator and a note taker. The facilitator may or may not be the person who called the meeting, but they should ensure that all participants are engaged and providing input. The facilitator also needs to be something of a time manager.

6. The meeting should have written action items, and the responsible party needs to be identified (no fair tapping people not present :) )

Some companies have adopted meeting free days. An interesting idea, with a good message, but probably not very practical for managing schedules and getting things done. More than ever I appreciate good communication and collaboration in companies today, but there needs to be a balance struck with efficiency and a need to get things done!

Mark