While reading news feeds I came across a CNET News article titled “Meetings suck, but they don’t have to.” The article gives a number of suggestions on how to make meetings more productive or “suck less.” My personal take is making meetings more productive should not be the only goal. Organizations should focus on eliminating or reducing the need for many of them.
I’m out of the meeting world now, having paid my dues twice over during my previous life as an I.T. Manager where working closely with Japanese associates presented an interesting perspective on meetings.
The Japanese regarded meetings as occasions to share information with those who might be affected by a decision but are not directly responsible for making then. The actual decisions were made prior to the meeting by an often lengthy process of face-to-face informal discussions between those whose job made them directly responsible.
These informal discussions were often held one-to-one after hours or even off-site (dinner or a drink.) Senior executives would be briefed and their approval received prior to the meeting or on occasion after the meeting if the executive wished to first see others reactions.
This was a normal process for the Japanese.
With time I came to understand and sometimes even appreciate this method. However, not understanding what was going on behind the scenes led to total frustration for many, mostly Americans, resulting in feelings of meetings being pointless with no decisions reached.
In most cases these meetings should have been done away with, or shortened drastically, using other and better methods for disseminating the information discussed in them.
I’m not promoting the Japanese method, but I believe most meetings today are non-value added. Smart organizations will eliminate those that aren’t.