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Bundling meetings together for one individual is an improvement for that person, sure. If you think about what meetings are attempting to achieve, it's about a
by jka 6y ago
Bundling meetings together for one individual is an improvement for that person, sure.
If you think about what meetings are attempting to achieve, it's about allowing a number of people to participate in a conversation, achieve progress on some decisions or plans, and if necessary communicate out the actions required.
If you think about it this way, then scheduling half-hour or one-hour blocks of time across groups of people requires significant scheduling and co-ordination overhead, and it places blocking time bounds on when each conversation officially begins (start of the meeting) and when it should conclude (end of the meeting).
The useful aspects of scheduled meetings are that they encourage the participants to prepare in advance, and a well-run meeting creates a sense of focus on a particular set of agenda items.
If someone's able to create a system that can achieve (measurably) the same quality of outcomes that scheduled meetings do, without the time-restricting side-effects, they'll be on to a winner.
The closest thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is issue tracking systems. They allow conversations to take place asynchronously over a long duration of time, and participants and communications can be looped into (and step out of) the thread when desired.
They also have the benefit that participants (current and future) can take more time than would be available in a real-time meeting to check the prior discussions, claims and statements that have led the group to their current situation.
- tchalla 6y ago> If you think about what meetings are attempting to achieve, it's about allowing a number of people to participate in a conversation, achieve progress on some decisions or plans, and if necessary communicate out the actions required. Broadly, every meeting fall under three categories - "Decision", "Information" or "Discussion". In any case, each of these three categories should lead to "Who does What by When" (WDWBW). In my personal experience, if WDWBW outcome is achieved - meetings move things forward. Otherwise, they don't do so much. Some things which have personally helped me to get towards WDWBW 1. Define Key Objectives for a Meeting 2. Define Agenda 3. Agenda has 4 parts - Topic, Owner, Expected Outcome, Duration, Time 4. Owner - The owner of the part of the agenda is expected to own the topic and drive it 5. Owner needs to pre-define the Expected Outcome beforehand. Broadly, there could be three outcomes - Information, Discussion or Decision 6. Moderator should keep a strict check on Time. Sometimes, if there's a overshoot - the moderator should either ask for team agreement to continue the topic for a limited time (10 min - for example) until the Expected Outcome is reached. If not, stop the meeting and move on the the next item on the Agenda.