Meetings Considered Harmful

January 25th, 2006

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have confirmed something I’ve had a growing suspicion of—meetings are bad. The longer and more frequent meetings, the greater the negative effects on the participants: anxiety, burnout, and depression.

Over at 37 Signals, they offer some suggestions as to why frequent and long meetings are bad — they usually contain a very low amount of information conveyed per minute, they drift off subject far too easily, and they’re normally all about words and abstract concepts, not real things. Their advice for dealing with meetings: don’t have them. Or if you absolutely have to have a meeting, keep it short. 30 minutes at the most.

Once the meetings are short, and less frequent, the next step is making them more productive. Manager Tools has some great tips and resources to help with this, including sample agenda templates to download and a very good podcast.

I’ve also heard very good things about John Cleese’s training video Meetings, Bloody Meetings, in which he is a thoroughly inefficient chairperson who dreams he is hauled up before a court for negligent conduct of meetings. Unfortunately the DVD is $650… so I think I’ll try and borrow it from someone who already owns a copy.

5 Comments

1 Mark Horstman Jan 27th, 2006 at 1:24 pm

Stuart-

Thanks for the kind words about Manager Tools, http://www.manager-tools.com. We’re meeting veterans, and our suggestions started from frustration, and then got refined into some guidelines that we live by.

I noticed your Amazon link to Pat Lencioni’s book, Death By Meeting. Pat is an insightful guy, and I recommend ALL of his books. They’re full of implementable ideas. Funnily enough, though, the one thought that I struggle with is in his meetings book, where he talks about making them dramatic. That one escapes me. (But that’s not a reason not to buy it – i have bought several copies for friends).

Thanks again, and cheers!

Mark
2 Catherine R Jan 30th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

I wonder if the meetings at the Ministry of Silly Walks are also as ineffective as these recent studies suggest!
3 Matt Pasiewicz Feb 22nd, 2006 at 11:32 am

Meetings, Bloody Meetings is quite good. Dated, but entertaining.
4 Don Jackson Mar 5th, 2006 at 7:40 pm

Yeah, i thought it was a hoot;but you’re about it being dated.