In an earlier post (Meeting Bane or Benefit?), I noted that having a clear meeting purpose helps limit attendee frustration and conflict. At times, cancelling a meeting may be the best way to do this! Sometimes meetings are unnecessary.
In their book Rework, the authors contend that many meetings are preventable. Before hosting a meeting, consider the following questions:
Another interesting way to view meetings is by considering ‘Meeting ROI’.[i] To calculate a meeting-return-on-investment, total the participant hours spent in a meeting and then multiply it by their average salary. For example:
Fried and Hansson provide a few other interesting meeting ideas. Take a look and see which ones look helpful for you:
I’d love to hear of your insights about ways to make meetings effective.
[i] Fried, Jason & Hansson, David (2010). Rework. New York: Crown Publishing. P. 110.
2 Comments
I love your ROI meeting calculation. If that was a norm, we’d never have committees. LOL.
Either that, or committees would function very differently! Did you know the technical term for a flock of vultures is a committee 😉