Be prepared. Simple.
While I’m one to agree with the 37signals view on meetings, they are often an inevitable and necessary evil in the day of us web workers. Over at About.com, there are some great tips on organising meetings to avoid the flow-destroying passion-suck that almost always happens.
I work in a town where the federal government is the business, so a lot of my clients live and die by committees, panels and meetings. For me, they are absolutely necessary. Personally, I think they suck the life out of a project - I’d much rather be doing something than talking about doing something.
I find the following strategies useful:
- deep preparation - know what I’m going to talk about, when and for how long
- strict time limits - no more than an hour
- a highly defined purpose - with an agenda broken down to 5-minute intervals
- poll the audience - if a committee needs to make a decision, spend some time one-on-one getting their views before the meeting takes place
If you’re cursed by having to attend meetings where decision-making takes a back seat, what strategies do you use for getting something real happening in them?
Image © Mot. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license.
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