1. No end goal = no meeting
Every meeting should include a brief and clearly defined
objective before ever getting scheduled and
everyone attending the meeting should
clearly understand this end goal. A goal indicates a bias
for action, not merely a discussion. Everyone in attendance must agree to
drive toward the goal as rapidly as possible.
2. Cut the
planned meeting time in half
Determine how much time you need for the meeting and then divide
it by two. Most 60-minute meetings I attend can easily be handled in 30.
Give the meeting a firm time limit and watch everyone become amazingly
efficient! (Shorter sentences, no unnecessary chatter, etc.)
Take this an extra step further by changing the default
meeting duration in your Outlook or Google calendar from "60 minutes"
to "30 minutes." Even better -- set it to "15
minutes"!
3. Limit the number of participants
The more people who attend a meeting, the more time wasted, and
the harder it is to stay on target. (Think: “Too many cooks in the
kitchen spoil the broth!”) Meetings with two people are far more
productive than those with three, etc., assuming they are theright people -- so send meeting
invitations selectively!
Jeff Bezos famously adheres to the "two-pizza
rule": Never hold a meeting where two pizzas can't feed the
entire group. If you work in a larger company, consider adopting this as a rule
of thumb going forward!
4. Absolutely
no tangents
Someone must play the role of
"enforcer" to keep the conversation on point at all times. Of course, this means establishing a clear
outcome for the meeting to begin with. No one wants the role of conversation
police, but someone has to do it. “I’m
sorry -- that might be an important topic, but it’s not for this meeting.”
Meetings still exist, of course, as a necessary evil. But you
can significantly diminish the evil while unleashing your team's
productivity by implementing these four very simple rules.
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