Meeting Overload: Simple Tips to Streamline Your Meetings

Note: This article was first posted on the Vancouver Business Journal website and can be viewed here.

There is actually a website based on the old joke about the meeting that should have been an email. There is even a coffee mug.How many of us have been in such a gathering? How often might be the better question.

The average organization probably meets too much for its own good. Most organizations meet too often, meet for the wrong reasons and may even meet for meeting’s sake: board meetings, committee meeting, ELT meetings, division meetings, department meetings, sales meetings, marketing meetings, supervisory meetings, finance meetings, special meetings and the occasional meeting about meetings.

Meetings are expensive. Time spent at conference tables – whether measured in internal costs or billable rates – may be a luxury we can no longer afford, at least the way we have been used to.

To be clear, I am not advocating we replace all meetings with emails. That is a foolish and wrong-minded notion. Because while the punchline about the meeting that could have been an email is as true as it is funny, the line about the email that should have been a meeting is only true. There is usually nothing funny about an email gone south.

Finish reading this article here.

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