People don't know what 'as few as possible' means though. It needs to be clearer than that. As a rule I encourage my reports to consider:
- Does it even need to be a meeting? Keeping meetings to things that need 'a discussion or decision', and keeping updates and announcements to chat or email works fairly well.
- Does the meeting give you any value, or do you bring value to it? If both are no they should decline it.
- Is there an agenda with expected outcomes? No agenda and no goal means it should be declined.
- Are you doing something that's a higher priority? Seeing one of my reports in a meeting when there's an active incident in progress gets me asking questions.
- Does the person running the meeting share notes afterwards? One thing I've noticed over the last couple of decades is that people are much happier to skip a meeting if they'll still hear about what happens afterwards. People don't skip them if being in the meeting is the only way to know about what was discussed or decided. I always encourage people to write some notes and share them if they've set up a meeting now.
>much happier to skip a meeting if they'll still hear about what happens afterwards.
If you're just a 'follower' of what's going on, that's fine. The problem shows up when you have some stakeholder or steering ability.
If you miss meeting about X and don't bring up discussion about Y then other person A may not talk about Z that affects X. But I agree that every meeting should have a point and total number of meetings should be minimized.
People don't know what 'as few as possible' means though. It needs to be clearer than that. As a rule I encourage my reports to consider:
- Does it even need to be a meeting? Keeping meetings to things that need 'a discussion or decision', and keeping updates and announcements to chat or email works fairly well.
- Does the meeting give you any value, or do you bring value to it? If both are no they should decline it.
- Is there an agenda with expected outcomes? No agenda and no goal means it should be declined.
- Are you doing something that's a higher priority? Seeing one of my reports in a meeting when there's an active incident in progress gets me asking questions.
- Does the person running the meeting share notes afterwards? One thing I've noticed over the last couple of decades is that people are much happier to skip a meeting if they'll still hear about what happens afterwards. People don't skip them if being in the meeting is the only way to know about what was discussed or decided. I always encourage people to write some notes and share them if they've set up a meeting now.
>much happier to skip a meeting if they'll still hear about what happens afterwards.
If you're just a 'follower' of what's going on, that's fine. The problem shows up when you have some stakeholder or steering ability.
If you miss meeting about X and don't bring up discussion about Y then other person A may not talk about Z that affects X. But I agree that every meeting should have a point and total number of meetings should be minimized.