“A meeting is an event where minutes
are taken and hours wasted.”
James T. Kirk
Somebody recently said to me, “I used to dread every second Thursday at work. That’s because it signalled the torture of our staff progress meetings”. They went on to say, “Those two hours each fortnight were physically challenging and mentally draining. If I wasn’t nodding off , I would be pinching my own skin under the desk in an effort to look alert”.
This person when on; “At least I wasn’t as bad as one of my co-workers John. He had the habit of continuously looking at his watch during the meetings, impervious to the stares of the manager”. Is this a sort of meeting that you are used to? Have you ever been to a meeting that started late, finished late or failed to accomplish anything of substance? This question I have to ask is, are these types of meetings really effective? Who is getting the most out of this sort of meeting, or are you and your colleagues wasting your time even having a meeting?
While many workplace meetings are productive and useful, some are a complete waste of resources and time. I believe that’s possible to slash hundreds of hours a year from your organisation’s meeting time by thinking differently about your meetings.
Poorly organised and ill-prepared meetings can bring out the yawns in the best of us. In addition to this, they are costly in both monetary and time terms. If you really think you need a meeting, or you have been invited to attend a meeting then ask yourself (or the person requesting the meeting) a couple of questions first.
- Has a specific purpose or goal been set for the meeting?
- Is there an agenda and will it be distributed ahead of time?
- Will only the people who need to be attending be there?
- Could the same information be covered in an e-mail, memo, or telephone conference call instead?
3 Some basic meeting rules
#1: Always start a meeting on time.Unless you’re waiting for a senior manager, make sure the meeting starts at the scheduled time.
#2: A good chairperson will use the agenda to direct and guide the meeting.The role of the chairperson is to ensure that the agenda items are discussed in order of importance and that no single agenda point goes over time. This way you will guarantee your meeting will finish on time.
#3: Create a “parking lot”.Before your meeting starts, create a parking lot! A parking lot is a flipchart placed in the corner of the room. Whenever someone raises an issue which is not part of the agenda, ‘park’ the idea for later. By parking any ideas that are not on the agenda you will guarantee the meeting will not go off on tangent or lose traction.
At the end of the meeting whatever is on the ‘parking lot’ can be used to create an agenda for the next meeting.
To learn more about managing your time and priorities, visit or go to
