Blog Post: Change Your Meetings

Half the time they’re not necessary, the other half the time they’re filled with people sharing way too much stuff about something of little or no relevance to my projects. Even if the meeting is well organized and follows a structure, it runs the risk of becoming a data dump for all participating until, at the end of it, your head is cluttered with a myriad of facts that you somehow need to process before you get to your next meeting.

Here’s a meeting tip from Effectivemeetings.com:  “The purpose of most meetings is sharing information and updating others. If possible, make an effort to substitute these types of meetings with an e-mail or memo! Simply send one e-mail to all the people who would have attended the meeting. This will save everyone time, they'll still be up-to-date on what's happening and they'll be grateful for having one less meeting to attend that week.”

Huzzah!  I agree.  In the day and age of information technology, the fact that we don’t utilize that technology to inform others is a near crime.  In fact, consider taking Effectivemeetings.com’s suggestion a step further, and utilize programs such as Sharepoint (or Silverlight, if you really want to get sophisticated) to provide an interactive communication hub for your team.

This opens up your meetings for collaboration, rather than the mere purpose of communication.  Your meetings can have a purpose, a goal to achieve, rather than focus on data-dump updates.  Before walking into the meeting, everyone can have brought themselves up to speed with their team projects, and can then open themselves to a discussion for solving problems associated with those projects.

Cause, if you’re like me, you’d rather be doing something, anything, than just sitting in some boring meeting.