Wednesday Wisdom: Meetings (Or Not to Have Meetings)

Today's Wednesday Wisdom is brought to you by Indra Books of Agility for All. Do you have a question? Post it in the comments.

Today's request is about meetings. This is a pet peeve of mine as many of you know. And for more feedback than I will cover here, check out the Agility for All YouTube channel and past blogs. 

The message I received. "No matter what I do, I can't seem to reduce the meetings on my calendar. Help!" 

First start with yourself and your teams. Every meeting should have a P.O.W.E.R. Start. If you don't know what that is, check out our resources for more information. If you don't want to take the time to do a P.O.W.E.R. start, then don't have the meeting. Also within your team ,and please don't laugh, have a meeting to decide how you are going to use alternative forms of communication both synchronous and asynchronous to manage information flow. Try collaborative spaces, chat, polls, email as just a few suggestions. 

Then start working on the rest of the organization. If you do not have a clear understanding of why you are to attend a meeting, decline it. If you attend and you are not contributing, decline the next one and let the meeting organizer know why you are declining. 

And give your teams permission to do the same. If there is no value for them in the meeting either they don't know why they need to be there or they really don't need to be there. Either way it is time wasted. This like everything else requires you to set boundaries and protect your teams with those boundaries. And then you have to stay firm on the boundaries. Lead by example and carry it through. 

And check out our meeting challenge. Do it with your whole team or division. Here's to fewer meetings in 2023.   

And that is today's Wednesday wisdom. Don't forget if you have a question post it in the comments. Tune in next week for our next segment.

Learn more about the work that we do and the programs that we offer. Set up a call to start planning how you want to change the culture of your organization.

Learn More

About the Author:

INDRA A. BOOKS

Connect with us