One of the biggest complaints I’ve run into in the past few years is that of the meeting. Done correctly, meetings are an efficient way to share information and make decisions. Done incorrectly, they are a dreadful waste of time and energy.
My advice is to treat meetings as contracts and to treat the people involved as clients. When you request to meet with someone have the end goal in mind. Don’t simply meet because you, “have several things to discuss.” Draw up an agenda for where the meeting will go and important questions that need answered and stick to the time allotted.
You wouldn’t show up late to a meeting with important clients, so don’t do it for your internal clients either. Encourage everyone to be there on time, if one person is 15 minutes late for a meeting with four other people – that’s one hour of productivity lost forever. End on time as well – you never know what other meetings yours is running into.
Some other quick tips: Produce and circulate summary of the decisions made and next steps to help keep everyone on the same page. Only invite those people absolutely necessary to the process, if they can’t make the call, they probably don’t need to be there.
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