I was reading Seth Godin’s blog today on “The new standard for meetings and conferences” and it reminded me of my dislike for unproductive meetings. We have all been to a meeting at some point and got up at the end wishing we could tell the meeting organizer, “Thanks for wasting my time!” Meetings can eat up valuable time and resources in an organization if not properly managed. The worst time eater are out of town meetings that accomplish very little.
I used to work for a telecommunications Company and upon merging with another Company, they were flying employees from both Corporate headquarters back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth again. Everyone was complaining of the complete uselessness of the time spent traveling – because most were expected to complete their work regardless of the “lost” time. Typically, employees would fly down on Tuesday evening, meet with people Wednesday and Thursday and fly back Thursday afternoon. They would only be in meetings about 5 hours on Wednesday and 2 to 3 hours on Thursday. The rest of the time was spent traveling or having a “business lunch.”
All of this was costing the Company tons of money. Not just the travel and meal cost, but the inordinate amount of lost productivity. And with employee morale already skiddish with the impending merger, all of these additional job pressures did not help retention.
As Seth points out, the standards for great meetings and conferences have changed. If you are going to consume someone’s time, make sure you are well organized and accomplish something of substance during the meeting time. As far as travel is concerned, the cost of quality video conferencing equipment will quickly be dwarfed by the cost of flying all over the place. Many meetings can accomplish just as must via video or teleconference as they do in person.
The funny thing about my story above is that I was working for a telecommunications Company, yet they still insisted flying people all over the country for meaningless meetings that could have easily been done through teleconferencing – at virtually no cost to the Company.
Posted in 
Tags: 
