There was a really terrific article in the Sunday Telegraph business section a while back which argued that by eliminating meetings, workers like you or I, could boost our productivity.
The author, business management thinker Josh Kaufmann, laid out his argument citing the contents of a provocative book entitled Read this before our next meeting by Al Pittampalli.
The book says that meetings, “Kill our productivity, jeopardise our results and drain our souls.”
Meanwhile Kaufmann’s article says that a day packed with meetings is a day where there’s, “not enough time to create anything that requires any sort of sustained concentration.”
He then goes on to suggest ways to help businesses and employees to keep meetings sane and productive such as keeping project teams small and autonomous, scheduling critical work first and meetings last, and implementing what he calls ‘zero meeting mornings’.
All of these ideas are well thought out and crisply articulated plus they seem entirely sensible to me.
Except.
Except I’d go that little bit further than guru Josh or expert Al.
You see I think meetings are mostly time-wasting sessions where too many people gather (for whatever reason) to tell each other things they already know. Meetings create very little of value. In fact they provide a hindrance service that could be easily costed up and invoiced to UK plc, no danger. And for that reason, they should be banned like fox-hunting or Bombay duck.
No, that’s going too far obviously. But how about adhering to the following golden rules?
- · No meetings to last more than 30 minutes
- · No more than four people in a meeting
- · Meetings can take place only on a day that’s got an ‘r’ in it. As per Oysters.
In truth, we don’t do many meetings at Fides because we kind of already get the ‘meetings are not so cool’ message. Still, maybe these guidelines would have a positive effect if they became ‘official’.
Think I’ll propose them at the next management meeting.....
