Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: meetings

Daily Reading List — August 26th

A letter to our online readers from our publisher – I've really missed Billie's comments for a long time. This is the final nail in that Cherokeep's coffin. 🙁

Pizza delivery man shoots, kills attempted robbery suspect – I had a friend back in the day who was robbed and shot while delivering pizza. Thankfully, he made a full recovery, but it was a long hard road. This outcome would have preferable to me. Word to the 321.

ZenTri Podcast 536 – What is Zen? – If you only listen to one podcast today about how Eastern philosophy can influence your training, make sure this is the one.

And…even if you aren't a triathlete but you'd to hear some plain talk ideas on how to get a little more clarity in general, you may dig this episode.

4 Reasons To Love Your Work – I'm batting .750 here. I'll take it. That part where you "actually like meetings" is a tall order.

Delicious Link Dump– December 15th through December 17th

8 More PowerPoint Train Wrecks – I went to a great 2 day coaching clinic last weekend. About 10 minutes of the 2 days included the use of PowerPoint. Coincidence?

In Search Of Clark Griswold’s House – You have to check every single light individually.

Carbonhagen Meltdown – LOL! “…riots, madness, styrofoam cups, people eating meat, real fur coats, CFC-laden hairspray cans, it’s crazy.”

STOP!

45 Free Online Computer Science Courses | – Street Fighting Mathematics? I’m in.

In pictures: Zambia’s leading lady in the ring – My buddy I.B. sent me this. He’s an Indian guy who grew up in Zambia and has a British accent. He also wrote the first code editor I’m aware of that allowed you to highlight and comment a complete block of code.

With U.S. Opportunities Dim, Expats Return Home – That’s a relief. Now we don’t have to worry about them taking our jobs. Oh…wait a minute…

Meeting Efficiency As Contact Sport

I’ve linked to this Seth Godin post about meeting efficiently before, but it was probably on Twitter. Here’s more than 140 characters worth…

I’ve noticed a typical script most meetings follow:

  • Lots of time spent waiting on people to arrive
  • Meeting then starts with people absent anyway
  • Issues are identified and discussed relatively quickly by the folks who were on time
  • Someone shows up late, and they inevitably want to rehash the issues that have been identified and discussed while they weren’t there.
  • Issues beyond the scope of the meeting are raised, usually by one of the people who was late.
  • At least one person feels the need to continue the meeting for the entirety of its scheduled time with “filler” material.

It all pays the same to me–just some things I’ve noticed over the last 15 years or so. What is strange is that this seems to be a relatively predictable situation, yet there haven’t been many attempts to correct it or make it more efficient.

Maybe if a fist fight or sumo wrestling match were scheduled to begin on time at the beginning and end of every meeting people would be anxious to get their on time and get the meeting over with as soon as possible?

I don’t know what the answer is, I’m just throwing ideas out there.

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