Just a reminder: 95% of the time, if you leave a meeting without a clearly-defined, actionable item, the meeting was a waste of time or you shouldn’t have been in attendance.
In our office, we do a pretty good job of avoiding unnecessary meetings. However, there is the occasional status-update meeting wherein one person talks and everyone else listens. Then the next person talks and everyone else listens. Repeat until everyone (sometimes 15+ folks) has said his/her piece. By and large, these meetings can be replaced with a well-written, itemized email.
A couple of benefits to this approach:
- It’s historical. You have an immediate, easy-to-archive record of everyone’s project status from a moment in time. This avoids the pitfalls of poor memory or poorly-taken notes.
- Everyone saves time. They save the time it takes to sit in a meeting; time taking notes; time discussing the meeting topics later because they can’t quite remember when Joe said he would be finished with the Shopping Cart module and why he’s still waiting on Suzy to finish the Purchase Order module, etc.
Ok, my trainer is giving me the eye. Back to class! (FYI, I’m in Denver training through the end of the week)
