Although the demands of business cause executives to attend more meetings than other professionals, executives need to avoid meetings. Top management is responsible for vision, strategy, plans, and communication. That means executives should spend most of their time thinking, learning, planning, and communicating. Inefficient, ineffective meetings waste the time of the company’s most valuable employees.
Actually, holding a large meeting is expensive. It can also be impressive if it is conducted properly, which means that it will be as small a possible.
This is true if your goal is to obtain random outcomes over infinite time. While this may occasionally produce spectacular results, such as winning a lottery, you can achieve predictable results faster by applying structured activities. These help people make methodical progress toward results. Otherwise, the group is attending a party, instead of working in a meeting.
Since there is always time to repeat a task, fix a problem, or make an apology, there must be time to take the steps that avoid such dilemmas. Overall, preparing an agenda saves time and money.
This is true for any meeting where people wasted time producing nothing. Effective meetings produce results that are worth documenting. Minutes serve to track action items, record decisions, and inform others. If you are planning a meeting with no results worth documenting, ask yourself why that meeting is necessary.
While this may be true for some meetings, most meetings can be conducted in less than an hour. Long, casual meetings lull people into lethargy. In general, people are able to focus on a task for 30 to 60 minutes. Then their attention fades, and they take mental holidays to think about other things.
This is true if you seldom hold meetings. Of course, if you have more than two employees, you need meetings to make decisions, reach agreements, and develop solutions. Effective meetings are a critically essential activity in running a business. They harness the combined wisdom of your staff to invent products, increase sales, improve productivity, plan strategies, and create success.
