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anonymous
Q: How to eliminate unnecessary meetings and turbo-charge the necessary ones?
Depends on your position in the company. If you're the boss, if the meetings are unnecessary YOU cancel them.
As to speeding up meetings, in my previous career, I always found scheduling a meeting last thing before everyone's time to go home worked. i.e. if you think the meeting should take an hour and the office closes at 5pm schedule the meeting for 4pm.
That sounds like a great name for a travelling seminar.
For a turbo you need a high-speed fan (turbo), air (and possibly gas) routing (manifold) and a wastegate.
standing meetings limit people doing long unneeded talks
strict rules on meeting times, if 5 people are having a meeting and someone shows up 5 mins late, that is 25 minutes of wasted time. one of my peers in a former job, if he was called for a meeting, he would walk out 3 mins after the meeting was scheduled to start if it had not.
if there is no well defined agenda for a meeting, decline the invite
KKCC:
You are absolutely right about standing meetings. I worked for a company in France - and French technocrats, one by one, love to pontificate at meetings - that adopted that protocol. Five-hour meetings with France Telecom were reduced to one hour at most. The legs and knees do give out after awhile, and hey, we got real work to do other than to listen to everyone's "learned" opinions/theories about an issue that needs resolving. Ha ha. I'll never forget our head engineer. Brilliant guy. As he rattled on about who-knows-wait, he would repeatedly place-hold his oratories with a "Oui, non, mais, attendre..." ("Yeah, No, But, Wait...") Over and over again. So funny. We turned his placeholder into an office mantra when we felt like getting silly.
Scandinavian:
The worst things about a five hour meeting with France Telecom is that they don't serve coffee, cheap bastards
If the meeting is conducted in a language you don't understand, walk out... it's rude to expect someone to show up, and then don't respect them enough to have them understand. (also says you don't put up with BS)
I pretend to understand far less Chinese than what I really know, so, I get excused from having to attend the Wednesday meetings.
GuilinRaf:
EXactly!
One of my friends, in a different university, was informed that he was required to go to the Wednesday teachers meetings even though he truly does not speak any Chinese. So, Every two or three minutes he would ask in a "pretend" whisper for a translation. After that first meeting, he was excused from all others.
Chinese bosses, just like their Western counterparts, just HATE being interrupted...
Before you go writing up a needs assessment, allow me to make a suggestion: synergy. That should allow let to change the paradigm by allowing you to think outside of the box. The rocket scientists and jocks you work will won't have a problem with that, but for those that do, rest assured that they are just being counter cyclical, and the natural smoothing will eventually quiet their concerns. For those that still require one, a reality check can be given by providing secondary data, which should highlight the wisdom of your plan. That said, be sure to leave a tolerance for uncertainty in your forecast. If all else fails, remember Brooks law and don't be afraid to downsize. You might have to bootstrap it for a few months, but you'll have less overhead as it'll cause your opex to drop. If you're smart about bundling your services in a way that entangles your costumers you'll be back at critical mass before you know it anyway. This is turning into a bit of a brain dump, but I feel I need to add a few more things. Remain multi-functional if at all possible, and don't be afraid to go DTC, and I'm sure I don't need to explain the advantages of demand side management to you.
TL:DNR I became a teacher to avoid having to worry about things like "turbo-charging" meetings. I think I advised you to ask your employees and/or coworkers to give you input on what they'd like to see cut, but I'm not sure of that at all. At some point all that corporate jargon becomes something of a Rorschach test. Honestly, I just wanted to write something with as much execuspeak as possible because I'm bored, and I wanted to remind myself why I didn't go to business school. Good luck with your problem though.
Let's make this meeting interesting and wake everybody up.
