Mel’s 10 Tips on How to Attend Fewer Business Meetings – or None at All
Copyright © 2017
Why attend meetings at all? Most are a colossal waste of precious time. Yours. So here are my ten best free tips. If they help, please consider contributing a dollar or two to me or Ourboox. More would be generous. A lot more would be idiotic (but I do love idiots). Thanks to @ajavuu at www.mindmeister.com for getting me thinking.
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Tip One: Don’t let anyone have control over your schedule. I know that sounds ridiculous if you’re a big shot with a secretary. I was once a big shot and I never let my secretaries set my meetings. Setting a meeting takes you a minute. Sitting in a needless meeting that your secretary thinks you are interested in wastes your time and that of your luckless colleagues.
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Tip Two: Meet on the fly. Aristotle had it right when he invented the Peripatetic School. Ask people you want to speak with to take a walk with you. You’ll finish things in a matter of minutes and get new ideas along the way. Another approach: someone comes to your office to speak with you. Take him/her on a walk to wherever you want to go. Catch: you’ll have to be attentive along the way.
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Tip Three: Get rid of those chairs in your office. People don’t tend to sit down on the floor. Bonus tip: In your conference room, raise the height of your table and get rid of the chairs. Standing up conferences are short and sweet.
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Tip Four: Don’t block out specific chunks of time for a meeting. Most meetings don’t have to take more than fifteen to twenty minutes in the first place.
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Tip Five: Narrow the number of approaches you want to discuss. Send out a memo before the meeting with ideas that your team will either agree to or not. Ask them to comment by e-mail before you set any actual meeting.
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Tip Six: If you have to cancel or postone a meeting, wait as long as you can before phoning the other party. Very often they will call you to cancel first. You come out looking good.
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Tip Seven: Scheduled unwanted meetings for seven in the morning. Tell them that this is the only free time you have available. This works like a charm.
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Tip Ate: Lunch meetings are often very productive. And you do have to eat lunch, don’t you?
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Tip Nine (the most important one): Some meetings are the make-or-break ones. Don’t send subordinates. Show up early, dressed to the hilt, with a smile on your face, a warm hand-shake and a definite game plan. Do your research, take notes, make sure you achieve something and follow up on it. Make the ones who matter most the game changers.
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Tip Ten: If it’s your boss who is setting up the meeting, ignore the previous tips and attend. I don’t want you to get fired and go around blaming me.
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Published: Apr 26, 2017
Latest Revision: Mar 3, 2019
Ourboox Unique Identifier: OB-297909
Copyright © 2017
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