I suggested a new policy which Mark seems to like:
If there is no agenda provided for a meeting, then all the chairs are confiscated
It is not clear if it is possible to ensure that this policy will be rigerously enforced.
Apparently Queen Victoria disliked meeting politicians so much that she insisted that they held their meetings standing up. Even today I believe the Privy Council meets standing up. It's supposed to make for very short meetings...
I offer no evidence to back up this claim. I could be totally wrong, but as I've just gone though a long irrelavent (to me) meeting and I can see the logic.
Re:Meetings
nicholas on 2005-09-30T18:42:44
I don't think we're able to jump to that directly.
Re:Meetings
petdance on 2005-09-30T18:54:05
When you get there, go to the next step, which is "All agenda items must specify a deliverable."
For example, it's not enough to have an agenda item of "project schedule" or "Talk about project schedule" or even "Discuss feasability of schedule." It must also include "Deliverable: approve or disapprove tentative end date of 11/7.".
It's not enough to have a meeting to "talk about" something. You're there to make something happen, not shoot the shit. If you want to shoot the shit, that's fine, but then you don't need a meeting to do that.
I've a friend who was flabbergasted that a Vice President at her company demanded more paperwork. Essentially, you had to start a form to call a meeting and after the meeting was over you had to complete the form. This involved stating what the objectives were, whether or not they had been accomplished and if other issues arose from the meeting. Then the form had to be circulated amongst the meeting participants for sign-off and finally the form had to be returned to HR.
My friend confronted the VP and asked him bluntly why he would require anything so silly. He looked at her, smiled, and said "would I really do anything that silly?"
That's when the light dawned on her. By making even calling a meeting such a pain in @$$, meetings were only called if they were really necessary. It actually appeared to work. People were avoiding calling meetings just to avoid all of that damned paperwork.
