Let’s Stop Meeting Like This

Tools to Save Time and Get More Done

Berrett-Koehler, 2014

15 min read

10 take-aways

Audio & text

What's inside?

Meetings are essential but they can drive employees crazy – unless you do them right.

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Editorial Rating

Qualities

Applicable

Recommendation

People usually dislike meetings. Often, meetings only waste time and build frustration. Yet organizations need their people to confer or need to hold meetings to unite a team or fulfill a specific goal. Employee-involvement specialists Dick and Emily Axelrod offer worthwhile strategies and methods to make your meetings more effective. Most of their ideas are pretty sensible; for example, involving all the participants in the advance design of a meeting. A few seem silly, if well-intentioned, like having competing groups build towers with raw spaghetti, marshmallows and duct tape. Overall, the Axelrods provide pithy quotations and useful, hands-on information – warmly infused with a sense that they actually care how your meetings work out. They cover planning, designing, facilitating and leading group sessions. The book’s art direction helps with a clean layout and lively, silhouette illustrations. getAbstract recommends the Axelrod approach to managers, executives, start-ups and anyone responsible for organizing meetings.

Summary

Not Another Meeting!

Many meetings fail their organizations and their attendees. Multiply the number of your company’s meetings times the number of participants times their pro rata hourly pay to discover the hidden financial cost of ineffective work sessions.

Consider the hidden costs, as well. Employees can spend 20% to 70% of the workday in meetings. If those gatherings don’t accomplish anything, that’s a tremendous loss of productivity. Still, organizations need to have their employees convene. Before you hold a meeting, use two criteria to determine if it is necessary. Do people need to share important information? Does sharing this information require dialogue? If the answer is yes on both counts, you need a meeting.

To determine who must attend, list those who have important knowledge to communicate, the authority to make decisions or a prominent role in the issue at hand. Handled correctly, meetings can offer tremendous value. They energize employees by helping them do meaningful work, make timely decisions and learn about vital company issues. Conferring can help employees develop professionally.

Quality meetings involve the following five ...

About the Authors

Dick Axelrod and Emily Axelrod are co-founders of the Axelrod Group, a consulting firm specializing in employee involvement.

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J. R. 2 months ago

nice
A. 1 decade ago

They just forgot the most important rule: «People who like attending meetings should be banned from meetings.» (Nassim Taleb)

Dick Axelrod and Emily Axelrod