Hate meetings? Who doesn’t?

Not that it isn’t important to get the right people together in a room to talk about important issues, but let’s face it, in most organizations (and by “most” I mean “virtually all”) the average meeting probably lasts longer than it needs to. When it does drag on too long, productivity takes a hit and we all wind up spending more time to accomplish less.

So when I saw a link earlier today billing itself as The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings, I clicked. And I’m glad I did. In that piece, Tony Tjan boils meetings down quite nicely:

Outside of general relationship building, consider that there are only three functional purposes for having a business meeting:

1. To inform and bring people up to speed.
2. To seek input from people.
3. To ask for approval.

My cynical side argues that he left out an important one – 4. To listen to the sound of your own voice (because we’ve all been stuck in a room with that guy, I’m guessing). Continue reading →