Meeting Alternative
Many meetings are just plain time-wasters. If eight people attend an hour-long meeting, the cost is the production that could have been done by those eight people. This could be pretty expensive to get some ideas. An alternative is to decide to skip the meeting.
Depending on the organization’s structure and meeting purpose, it might be more effective to forgo the meeting and have the organizer to call each person separately. An agenda could be distributed with an “appointment” for the phone call. The participants would be questioned by the chair or would present their comments or suggestions during the call. If we assume the calls to the seven other participants would last one hour in the aggregate, the organizer would spend the same time he would have anyway. However, each of the participants will save over 50 minutes and the organization would gain six hours of productivity.
The chair’s phone calls will be much more focused and he should have the needed input.
This format can be very effective. It obviously will not work where cross conversation and exchange of ideas is necessary, but it will work in many situations.
Sometimes the most efficient meeting is not the most effective; and no meeting is the most effective!
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