HBR Guides to Being an Effective Manager Collection (5 Books) (HBR Guide Series)

PREFACE

The Condensed Guide to Running Meetings

by Amy Gallo

Editor’s note: Here’s where to start if you need to organize a meeting soon—and you don’t have a ton of time to prepare, but you want to do it right. When you’re not so pressed for time, take a look at the rest of the book, which expands on themes raised here.

We love to hate meetings. And with good reason—they clog up our days, making it hard to get work done in the gaps, and so many feel like a waste of time.

Paul Axtell, author of Meetings Matter: 8 Powerful Strategies for Remarkable Conversations, says that this is a major pain point for nearly every manager he works with. “People are absolutely resigned,” he says. “They have given up on the hope that it could be different.” Axtell ...