Meetings

In our rapid pace society meetings more and more are being discouraged. They are seen as pointless, a waste of time, irrelevent, boring and demotivating. These general perceptions came about because for the most part, they are true. So many writers on leadership and management are discouraging having meetings. They have looked at the current culture and decided that meetings are overrated.

Books such as "Death by Meeting" and "Rework" talk about the pitfalls of meetings and how it kills productivity. But I would like to suggest a different view. Our problems with meetings are real but instead of giving up on meeting, lets rework meetings.

What if meetings guided productivity? What if they energized people instead of draining them? What if they reduced each persons workload because everyone was on the same page and people were able to gain from collective wisdom.

I am not advocating for more meetings, but I am suggesting that with some thinking, vision casting and some work, we can make meetings one of the most valuable parts of our week instead of a necessary evil.

I have been in meetings that just absolutely drain me and leave me frustrated. But I have also been in meetings where I didn't want to leave. I could have been there all day, But when it did come time to leave and get back to work, I was so energized because it refreshed the vision and what my work was accomplishing. It redefined my roles, my focuses and gave me new insights.

Our problem with meetings is real, but lets reshape them instead of nixing them.