I’m not a fan of meetings, but they’re necessary. However, sometimes I wonder if we rely on them too much. Below is a challenging post from Seth Godin about meetings.
By the way, if you’re not a regular reader of Seth, do yourself a favor and subscribe to his blog here and now. I often refer to it as the devotional for marketers. Really, he offers practical, but challenging thoughts, on how we’ve fallen in the traps of doing “normal” things day-to-day.
Read it and consider answering this one question in the comments:
If you were responsible for every meeting, how would you change meetings at your company?
If you work directly with me, I’d love your thoughts in the comments section too (yes, publicly).
Firemen, donuts and meetings
When a building is burning down, fireman coordinate their actions, make decisions and save lives.
They do this without Aeron desk chairs or Dunkin Donuts. They do it without subcommittees, McKinsey studies or input from the boss in another city.
To quote Al Pittampalli, “why bother going to a meeting if you’re not prepared to change your mind?” To which I’d add, “Don’t bother having a meeting if you’re not there to change or make a decision right now.”
Somewhere along the way, meetings changed into events where we wait for someone to take responsibility (while everyone else dives for cover).
How would you do it differently if the building were burning down? Because it is.
