Effective Meetings in the Real World

Abstract

People talk all the time about how much they hate meetings, how they have too many meetings, how the meetings they attend are all badly run with no outcomes, and so on. You know what I’m talking about—and face it, we’ve all said those things before. Worse yet, as PMs we create those crappy meetings! Today companies go to great lengths to teach all of us how to have effective meetings, but we just don’t play that way. When was the last time you were in a meeting that resulted in decisions and actionable data? How about a meeting with a good agenda? I’m not talking about a static list of bullets like “status update” here, but relevant discussion topics with clear outcomes. I’m betting that it’s been a while, and I’d also bet that you run some of these mind-sucking meetings.