Meetings: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As one of the new guys here at Monster, I’m not yet being asked to attend too many meetings. I have an average of five per week, and none lasts longer than an hour. My colleague Christina, on the other hand, has become known as the “Meeting Queen.” She routinely spends well over half of her day running from one meeting to the next, often leaving her precious little time to really sink her teeth into some important projects that are best handled from the comforts of her desk. Yikes!

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m all for meetings -- just as long as they are actually necessary, can move a discussion forward, and don’t carry on longer than scheduled because the participants are unprepared or talking in circles. Unfortunately, I’ve had far too many meetings in my professional life that failed on all three of those counts.

If I were offering advice to some of those beleaguered meeting leaders, I’d first point them to a great post by self-improvement guru Chris Brogan, who lists his suggestions for keeping meetings short and productive.  His recommendations include:

• Make sure the agenda is published ahead of time.
• Start meetings on time, even if everyone hasn’t arrived.
• Give everyone in the meeting a chance to be heard, but keep the conversation relevant to the agenda.
• Get to the “next steps.”
• Finish on time -- or even early!
• Publish and distribute brief meeting notes promptly.

Monster also has some helpful resources on running snappier meetings:

• "Help Make Meetings Productive"
  
  
• “Meeting Planning 101"
  
  
• "Successful Meetings: The Diversity Factor"
  
  
• "Ward Off Meeting Vampires"

Feel free to comment with your own suggestions, or share one of your most memorable meeting horror stories. Everyone has at least one!

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