meetings again

I came to the conclusion that some of the meeting nightmare I was blogging about a few days ago is due to the fact that people arrive late (at least 15min) into meetings and are very undisciplined in meetings. I decided to tackle this meeting nightmare with a positive attitude.

I will keep at least my meetings short and sweet, by following the following five rules (which I learned by my former boss at Profero, who at the time I considered a bit of a a pain in the arse but wasn't):

1. meeting starts 5 minutes early (so everyone is there on time)
2. meeting ends 15 minutes late (so you have time to make notes, follow-ups,etc)
3. no laptops (so people listen to each other)
4. no phones (obvious one)

perhaps if I get a few people on board with this it will start making an impact

Meetings

As unexciting as it may sound, one of the biggest challenges I have at work is how to find time to sit down with people at work and talk.

Thing is, people's diaries are booked off for days and days and so even getting 4-5 people together for a few minutes is a big task. Example:



The causes? No idea. I guess it's a combination of little delegation, too many meetings, to long meetings, poor time management in meetings ... whatever it is, everyone seems to be busy meeting everyone else, all the time!

I am trying all sorts of things to get around the problem (keeping my meetings short and organised, meeting few people separately instead of all people at once, scheduling meetings early in the morning) but I have a feeling the system is still winning.

And then I wonder: if the people I am trying to meet are this busy, how must the diary of someone's really important look like? (Barack Obama, Mahatma Ghandi, you name it).