July 2004 

Excerpt

Times change, and so do the meeting needs of a group.
Just because a regularly held meeting was critical in the past doesn't mean it delivers value today. And just because a meeting format once served a purpose doesn't mean it isn't an empty (and time-wasting) ritual now.

Susan Battley, the founder and CEO of New York-based Battley Performance Consulting, recommends performing an audit of all regularly scheduled meetings to optimize frequency, format, length and attendee list.

In shadowing an executive over the course of several days, she consistently finds that hours of his and others' time are wasted in low- or no-value meetings.

One problem is that many meetings are not "right-sized": Either they aren't long enough to handle difficult issues, or they aren't deliberately limited to make a quick, informative exchange of ideas happen without allowing the introduction of other problems that take the discussion off-track.

Excerpted from "Is Your Company as Dull and Unproductive as Its Meetings?" by Christina Bielaska-DuVernay. 

Full article available at http://harvardbusiness.org, product C0407A