simplicity

Practice 6

Decorum: If You Have to Have a Meeting

The meetings I dread are announced when someone says, “Let’s get a group together and talk about X.” It’s pretty much guaranteed that such an ad hoc meeting will be unstructured, unproductive, and potentially unpleasant.

I’m not totally against meetings. But if a meeting has to happen, then we should do our best to make it pleasant and productive. And that means that someone has to take responsibility for organizing it and running it.

Running a meeting considerately and effectively involves the following:

• Having a clear objective
• Verifying that a meeting is needed
• Preparation
• Selecting attendees
• Scheduling
• Direction
• Wrap-up and follow-up

This is all basic stuff, but it’s normally ignored or done half-heartedly. ...