The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings by Anthony Tjan

The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings – Anthony Tjan – HarvardBusiness.org

Anthony Tjan Upstarts and Titans
The Key to Shorter, Better Meetings

1:04 PM Tuesday June 23, 2009

Tags:Organizational culture, Personal effectiveness, Time management

Here is a simple managerial tip for meeting effectiveness that I learned some years ago.

Outside of general relationship building, consider that there are only three functional purposes for having a business meeting:

1. To inform and bring people up to speed.
2. To seek input from people.
3. To ask for approval.

Use this as a filter to determine why you are having a meeting and explain that purpose to your audience. Your meetings may often cut across multiple objectives but forcing yourself to clarify the agenda into these three purposes can result in more effective meetings.

Consider a meeting that sets its agenda goals along the lines of: “I want to bring you up to speed on these two things; I need input on this item; and finally I would like to seek your approval on these outstanding issues.” That’s it — a simple 3 purpose meeting rule that frames the goals of the meeting from the perspective of the meeting participant.

If you haven’t figured it out, the purpose of this blog was twofold: to inform you on this framework and seek your input on it. What do you think?