Fill the decision vacuum in your meetings
Do your staff meetings stink? Are they black holes that destroy all the excitement and productivity of the poor saps who dare enter?
If so, you're probably not alone. Yesterday's daily stat from Harvard Business Review says "two-thirds of meetings end before participants can make important decisions." That's just depressing.
If this is the case at your association, then perhaps it's time to institute a rule that no meeting can end without a decision being made. Just by reducing the sheer amount of wasted time (two out of every three meetings!), enforcing such a rule could have a bigger single impact on your staff's and volunteers' productivity than anything else you do. Just a thought.
If you're wondering how to make your meetings more effective so you can follow such a rule, you're in luck: Forbes.com offers some tips on how to run a meeting in an article just posted today.
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Comments
It's hard to know exactly what all this statistic might be telling us without the full research behind it.
Maybe there is a corollary to what you're suggesting: "no meeting can be held unless/until the necessary parties can come fully prepared to make a decision."
I find myself in a lot of meetings where it's clear not everyone has had time to do the homework in order for the gathering to be productive.
And then some meetings are intentionally designed to be about drafting and discussing, not making a decision.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | October 6, 2010 8:48 PM