March 29, 2013

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Meetings

How much of a person’s life is wasted at meetings?

Many meetings are productive and result in ideas or resolutions to problems coming from a collective mind that is more creative and knowledgeable than could be expected of any one of its participants.  Other meetings consist of excessive discussion to reach what was a foregone conclusion.  Sometimes you can tell in advance how productive a meeting is going to be; often you can’t.

It would be depressing to actually try to figure how much of my life has been spent in meetings – which would be the first step toward answering the question of how much time was wasted.  Let me simply say that I accept meetings as an inevitable part of life.

I won’t discuss meetings that have been required of me at work.  However, even my free time, after work or before work, is filled with meetings, and I will mention a very few of those.

For several years, I was a member of the board of directors of KBDI-TV, Channel 12, a public television station in the Denver area.  There were some great people on that board with me, and much of what we did during our meetings was productive.  If they were only a bit shorter and less frequent . . . . . Continue reading →