Meetings. Don't you hate them?

[otterinbham 0]

Okay. Yesterday, I sat in a two hour meeting where nothing was accomplished, while I had a host of other pressing obligations. Because it was one of my clients, I am able to bill that time. Yet, it amazes me how much waste there is in the simple act of getting people together in a room to talk.

Here's my philosophy. Aside from strategic planning, no meeting on the planet should ever last longer than an hour. Ever. If they do, it means that somebody hasn't prepared for the meeting, or nobody has the guts to make a decision. I decided to codify my tactics:

1) Have an agenda. Lack of an agenda means long, rambling discussions. I ask for an agenda before the meeting (even if it's five bullet points) and ask what we're going to accomplish. If the person calling the meeting can't provide those two things, I know some serious time is going to be wasted.

2) Limit participants. It's human nature that if someone is called into a meeting, they feel obligated to participate, even if they have no clue what is going on. So the fewer people in the meeting, the better.

3) Ask for action points. The worst thing that can happen in a meeting is to plan another meeting. I won't close a meeting until we have defined taskes assigned to team members with due dates.

So. What are your tactics? Sorry to vent to you guys. But it sure beats my emptying a revolver into the twitching body of my ineffectual client.

[Captain Liger 0]

I have to participate in three different meetings. One is held each week and the other two rotate every other week. All these meetings are held on Tuesdays starting at 1pm each lasting one hour or less and this is the first unit I've been in where the one hour rule is enforced. We didn't have a meeting yesterday because we're in the field but yesterday should have been Command & Staff at 1pm where all the troop commanders and 1SGs, the primary staff officers, the squadron commander, XO and CSM meet to discuss various unit statuses. The only rule for the staff officers (people like me) is that you only brief if you have something that pertains to ALL the troop commanders. Otherwise, just say "no issues." Then the commanders get to brief any issues they have and ask questions of the staff officers if they have any (because the staff supports the commanders). Then at 2pm the weekly training meeting starts where the same audience convenes and we review the training calendar for the next six weeks and address any show stoppers. And that's it. The other rotating meeting we have is called the SCO Update (Squadron Commanding Officer Update). It's a small meeting in terms of audience and only involves the primary staff officers, the squadron commander and XO. Each staff officer uses a color coded excel spreadsheet (green, amber, red) to brief from that addresses whatever is relevant to his staff section in regards to upcoming training events which are standard for all staff sections. All I brief for my section are the statuses of personnel readiness and equipment readiness and the status of the order I may or may not have to write for a training event. It's pretty quick and painless and little less formal than command & staff.

The unit I'm in now operates pretty efficiently when it comes to meetings. We all hate meetings but it's a necessary evil to make sure we're all in sync. While we're in the field the only meeting we have is the daily FM radio update. Basically the commanders and staff officers give daily updates over the airwaves (provided by yours truly) as to what they've accomplished in the last 24 hours and what they plan to accomplish in the next 24. This "meeting" lasts no longer 15 minutes.

But I really have a short fuse when it comes to someone calling a meeting and then being completely unprepared to run it or brief. I hate having my time wasted. I have been known in the past to just get up and walk out of a meeting that's SNAFU...which has gotten me into hot water. Apparently majors and lieutenant colonels don't like it when smart ass lieutenants/captains walk out.

[AU_tiger_2000 0]

We run into a problem with people hijacking our meetings that we have on Wednesdays. So the solution was to publicly cancel the meetings and then privately invite the people who don't hijack the meeting. My meeting today lasted 1 hr. instead of the usual 2.5

[otterinbham 0]

Here's what I did on a consulting project for a client a few months ago. I had just sat in on a status meeting that went on for 2.5 hours. There were 8 people in it, and 3 people most of the talking on items that simply didn't involve the other 5.

Now, mind you, their company's blended billable rate was $120/hour. Multiply that by 8 people and then by 2.5 hours for a typical weekly meeting, and you just burned $2,400 in billable time. And he has one of these meetings every week! Multiply that by 50 weeks (throw out Christmas holidays), and you've just burned through $120,000 of potential billings.

So I said to the company president, and he was flabbergasted. Yet the guy won't pony up $3,500 on a really good project management system. Go figure. I guess I can't save this guy from himself.

[keoson7 28]

My meetings usually involve measuring the space and throwing out a $$figure. Except my employee meeting on the way to a job, that one involves a fresh rolled doobie, and the puff, puff pass method......