The 25 Minute Meeting

Introduction

We all know it.

Meetings suck.

They suck up our energy and enthusiasm for life at work.

Many of us are time-poor, stressed out, overwhelmed and on the verge of ‘death by meetings’. Our calendars are full of irrelevant or tedious back-to-back ‘catch-ups’ and our email is overloaded with messages screaming for attention.

Every time we get a chance to breathe and catch up on some ‘real work’, our computers ding! to remind us of another pointless meeting that is starting in five minutes.

Last year, I put the following post up on Facebook:

Meetings seem to be the de facto way of working yet they aren’t always as effective as they could be. In fact, most people roll their eyes at the mention of meetings … I’m researching for my new book and would love to know what is the one thing you HATE MOST about workplace meetings?

Top 10 meeting pet peeves

Here are the top 10 responses I got back:

• That you have a meeting to get ready for the meeting, and a meeting after to go over the meeting (like having to clean the house before the house cleaner comes).
• People showing up late. People showing up unprepared. People showing up who don’t need to be there. People not showing up at all.
• An agenda not sent in sufficient time to allow people to prepare properly. Then, not even sticking to the agenda. Or lacking a clear commitment to time frames set for the agenda.
• Looking at phones rather than being present.
• People who leave midway because they have ‘more important matters’. (They ...