9 ways to have more efficient meetings
Sick of digressions, latecomers holding things up, the lack of focus in your meetings? Make sure your meetings are accomplishing your goals. Here’s how.
An essential participant shows up 10 minutes late. Discussions veer off into tangents. Nothing is decided. Everyone is texting or checking email on phones and laptops, raising the question of why get together at all.
Author and speechwriter Michael Long observes, “George Costanza put it best: I don’t think there’s ever been an appointment in my life where I wanted the other guy to show up.”
If we all feel that way, why do we call meetings that so often amount to time drains? Before you snooze through another dull meeting, take control and make your confabs useful. After all, we’re all in the communications business, aren’t we?
The matter of meeting efficiency caught my eye after the publication of a story about an email from Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
The rocket- and car-making boss appears to be ready to launch into space anyone who wastes his time. “Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time,” Musk muses.
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