Meetings: No Objective, No Agenda, No Thanks
At work, many of you are probably like me in that you have standing meetings you are invited to. Weekly team meetings. Bi-weekly meetings with the boss. Working groups. Project teams.
This time adds up and significantly detracts from your potential productivity. How many meetings have you walked out thinking, "I didn't need to attend that"? Or "what did we accomplish?" Or "that's an hour of my life I'll never get back"?
A lot of the meetings I'm currently invited to revolve around the same general flow:
Updates
Status
Around-the-room
Lately at work I've been pushing back on meetings, especially the regularly scheduled ones. I'll ping the organizer and ask for the agenda or a list of the objectives. If there aren't either, I elect not to attend.
The strange thing is, when I've pushed back against these types of meetings, I appear to be in the minority! Is it because I'm anti-social? Do people in the workplace naturally enjoy these get togethers?
Fundamentally, most meetings should be based around making a decision. If a meeting doesn't result in any decisions, why was it held? Apparently I'm one of the few people who think this way.
