I had a long day yesterday at work. This happens occasionally, when we need to have long meetings across multiple continents.
So, I’ll keep it short.
And about meetings.
If you ask most people, they’ll agree: meetings suck so hard they could be patented by Dyson. Yet, we spend a ton of times in meetings every working day. At least, I know I do.
Why is that?
For sure, many meetings should be an email. Most status update meetings (but not the review and discussion that can come out of that, I believe) for example.
In some cases, you’re inviting too many people to a meeting. It’s emotionally hard to get up and leave, and you never know if it might be useful to be there. That sucks too.
But many meetings are good, and bring lots of value to you, the other participants, and the business.
According to Seth Godin, they belong to one of three categories:
- Meetings to inform. Where you are told stuff, or you’re telling someone stuff.
- Meetings to discuss. Where you are discussing with others about something, and getting your input is the goal.
- Meetings to approve. Where you hope the other party will say yes to something, but they might say no.
There are many other ways to slice it, but if you figure out what type of meeting you’re into out of those three, you’ll have an advantage at trying to find the value.
The meeting might belong to all of those categories (you’re told something, then you move to discuss something else, and finally you seek for the outcome of the discussion to be approved). However, it will typically be one category at a time.
This is just the first stab at making sense of meetings, but let me know if you agree!