Death By Meeting

Meetings. Who likes them? Do you actually accomplish things in meetings? I just read a great post Schedule Another Meeting? You’ve Got to Be Kidding!  It reminded me of how much I think most of the meetings we do are a waste of time. And of money.

One of my mentors, Cameron Herold, taught me a great outline of what every meeting should look like:
• State the purpose
• State the outcome
• Have a clear agenda: no agenda, no attenda!

I will add a few more:
• Start it on an odd time. For example, we host our daily huddle at 10:54. Why? Because if we did at 11, then people would come late. By having it an odd time, you are forced to look at the clock.
• Always have a Triple “W” list. I learned this from another mentor Verne Harnish. Who will do What by When. If you have a meeting where you don’t have a need for this, then you shouldn’t have had the meeting.
• Always ask: do we really need to have this meeting?

Now this doesn’t mean not to have meetings. In fact, if done properly, they save a lot of time.

At Nurse Next Door, we try to follow a pretty strict meeting rhythm. Monday mornings are dedicated to meetings. Nothing else. We try to get ALL of our meetings for the week done by Monday afternoon. Then we are freed up to actually work. And we stick to it. No one will book appointments outside of our office on a Monday morning.

I just have to have even more discipline to say “no” to meeting requests outside of this time.

Death by Meeting is a book written by Pat Lencioni that I highly recommend to alleviate the meeting doldrums and actually make meetings work for you.