All face to face meetings to disseminate information are a complete waste and should be banned in modern practice.

All meetings and/or portions of meetings that are to transmit information should be banned from modern project management practice.

All meetings that do not fully engage all attendees for the full meeting should be banned from project management practice, or the unengaged should be dismissed form the useless portions of the meeting.

All meetings that do not have a specific desired outcome of some solved or partially solved problem, should be banned from modern project management practice. (Well organized planning meetings and team building exercises qualify as outcome desired meetings.)

Corollary: All meetings should be working meetings.

In the old days, when we had one telephone and it was connected by two wires and no speaker , we used regularly scheduled meetings to transmit information, and get commitments and occasionally solve some pressing problems. We also used the meetings as a record to prove someone other than “me” was responsible for delays and cost overruns.

That was then and this is now.

Having a meeting solely to transmit information, assumes the attendees are either illiterate and/or have no e-information skills. That’s great for team morale (not) and to imply that you think your client is rather dull. Both are great business productivity improvement schemas. I once worked for a college dean who would bring all the memos and notes he had received that week and read them to us. What a waste of everyones time.

With modern communication tools and portable scheduling devices, top managers should easily be able to schedule meetings so that individuals can come and go  when they need to be engaged min the business of the meetings. If they are not engaged, let them drop out to the lobby (or better provide a “green room”). The reality is that busy and smart folks are already texting or reading email when they are not engaged in any meeting they are forced to attend. We have great electronic communication tools to organize, plan, organize, run and  follow through meetings.

This week I attended a meeting by a teleconference call while I attended a webinar. I would watch the webinar and tune in when I needed to be in the meeting and I did the same for the meeting following the agenda to trigger my engagement. The meeting was held 250 miles away, and the webinar was sent from an adjacent building. I was also supervising a staff worker in my office and monitoring my email and voice mail. (my voice mail is available on my laptop.) I did all this with one rather plain notebook PC.

Meetigns for meeting sake are often just ego support for the sponsor and many times for the attendees. In my last organizational management role (academic chair) we were required by the institution to hold regular faculty meetings. I would walk around to the faculty and “call a meeting”, the meeting would last the semester while I walked around from office to office. We adjourned the meeting on graduation day with a social lunch. Many of the faculty just couldn’t get it. They argued for meetings and more meetings. I refused, as these meetings were exercises in futility, where the smartest among them just wanted to prove how dumb I was, and how they knew everything. It took then ten years to oust me (on my schedule) for not providing them with a regular outlet for their anger and frustration. There is a reason things take forever to change in education. However the day is coming for change, the failed economy, on-line education and robust teaching and learning technology and productivity measures will deliver the necessary impetus for education change.

Caveat: in our ever remote lives, we need social contact. I readily admit that fact. I mostly work at home and do not need an office, except to keep my public persona memorabilia and very occasionally meet someone. I go to “work” for social engagement and to gage the sense of the organization. That's for fun and easier to triangulate what’s going on. As I only have one part time tele-worker to supervise, we rarely get together, but we both make sure we do that at least a few times a year.

The take away: Think about how much you are wasting of your own and others time when you schedule and plan meetings. is their some other more effective and efficient way to get the job done. If there isn’t a better way than meetings, invent one!