5 Reasons to Hold Meetings [Ian's Messy Desk]
Last month I posted 5 Steps to Useful Meetings. The first step is to make sure the meeting is necessary. How do you decide if holding a meeting is necessary?
There are only 5 reasons to hold meetings. (I believe I picked up this list from David Allen, but I didn’t cite anyone in my notes.)
- To give information – this is the type of meeting where a group of people need to get important information and a group e-mail won’t do. You would call an information meeting if you were announcing an company restructuring; you would schedule a meeting to make the announcement.
- To get information – this would be the opposite of the first reason. Here, a group of people need to share information. This type of meeting would work when a project team needs to present a status report to management or clients.
- To develop options – when you’re undertaking a project for a client or you’ve reached an impasse on an internal job, you need to meet with stakeholders to look at options for moving forward.
- To make decisions – Not all decisions can be effectively made by one person. Decisions that effect an organization, group or company can require the support of the majority, if not all. As well, a contractor will need to meet with clients to have decisions finalized before proceeding with work.
- Warm, magical human contact – There may be times when you’ve been working on your own so much that you need to get together with others. I tend to call these meetings lunch or coffee. If reason five can be coupled with the previous four reasons, it will be much more productive. If it’s just a need to meet and talk, perhaps a more informal approach will work better.
Make sure that you communicate to all participants the reason for the meeting. If those in attendance each have different ideas about why the meeting is being held, it will hamper the effective flow contributions.
Original post here: Ian McKenzie
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