{"id":930,"date":"2018-02-07T10:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T10:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/?p=930"},"modified":"2025-07-01T17:20:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T17:20:22","slug":"majority-meetings-discussions-lead-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/majority-meetings-discussions-lead-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPeople who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 <em>~ \u00a0Thomas Sowell<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cHas anyone ever said, \u2018I wish I could go to more meetings today?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 <em>~ \u00a0Matt Mullenweg<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201cMeetings are indispensable when you don&#8217;t want to do anything.\u201d\u00a0 <em>~ \u00a0John Kenneth Galbraith<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was going to say that meetings get a bad rap, but they really don\u2019t.\u00a0 If we\u2019re honest with ourselves, too many meetings (way too many) are boring, pointless, and a waste of time.\u00a0 But it doesn\u2019t have to be that way.\u00a0 Done correctly, meetings are an indispensable part of the way we do business.\u00a0 They can be an essential tool for coordinating efforts, solving problems, making decisions, and reaching consensus, all of which lead to taking action.\u00a0 So what\u2019s the problem?\u00a0 Why do so many meetings fail to achieve much?\u00a0 For more on this, please continue reading below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe majority of meetings should be discussions that lead to decisions.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0 <em>~ Patrick Lencioni<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Meetings aren\u2019t inherently bad, but we frequently conduct them in ways that are.\u00a0 Consider a few examples.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Regularly scheduled meetings.<\/strong> As, for instance, the weekly staff meeting.\u00a0 Too often these get to be a matter of habit with no expectation of any particular outcome.\u00a0 So we review some of our key performance indicators (metrics), talk about what\u2019s going to be happening this week, then we adjourn and everybody goes about their day with no decisions made, no problems solved, and no actions to be taken.\u00a0 In short, these meetings \u00a0only disseminate information that could probably have been disseminated more efficiently by text message or email.\u00a0 As Patrick Lencioni suggests above, if we aren\u2019t here to solve a specific problem or to reach a specific decision, why are we wasting our time?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Too many cooks in the kitchen.<\/strong> Everyone complains about meetings, but no one wants to be left out for fear that their absence will signal a diminished importance to the organization.\u00a0 As a result, we have nine people in a room to talk about something that affects only three of them.\u00a0 We need to make sure meeting notices go only to those who really need to be there.\u00a0 To the uninvited, we need to convey a message that they are so important to the organization, and their time is so valued, that we\u2019re not going to waste their time by making them sit in on meetings that don\u2019t concern them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Too many rabbit holes.<\/strong> A well-conceived meeting should have a specific purpose with a specific outcome in mind . . . i.e., a problem solved or a decision made.\u00a0 Whoever is leading the meeting must keep the group focused on the expected outcome and not allow the discussion to get sidetracked into unproductive rabbit holes.\u00a0 If the discussion is too unfocused and wide-ranging, participants will start to feel that their time is being wasted and will wonder why they are there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Insufficient conflict.<\/strong> Sometimes, in the name of keeping peace in the family, a leader will avoid discussions that might provoke conflict.\u00a0 That\u2019s a mistake.\u00a0 When the members of a group are able to express and defend their ideas and opinions, even when the discussion becomes contentious, that\u2019s when creative, innovative solutions are born.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are lots of ideas about how often meetings should occur, how long they should be, how they should be structured, etc.\u00a0 In fact, in his book, \u201cDeath by Meeting,\u201d Patrick Lencioni offers some very specific advice about how to structure daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly meetings, each with its own role in the company\u2019s overall meeting schedule.\u00a0 But the real secret to a good meeting, regardless of frequency or structure, is purpose.\u00a0 It has to have a defined purpose, and that purpose has to have weight and importance . . . preferably, a problem to be solved or a decision to be made.\u00a0 But a solution or decision doesn\u2019t have much value unless it actually gets implemented. \u00a0So when everyone is packing up to leave the meeting, the leader has to say, \u201cWhoa!\u00a0 We\u2019re not done here yet.\u00a0 We still have to decide who\u2019s going to do what to get this implemented, and we have to decide on a timeline for getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, when your people walk into a meeting, is it another ho-hum, business-as-usual, let\u2019s-just-get-this-thing-over-with part of their day?\u00a0 Or do they walk in with a feeling of anticipation that we\u2019re going to be doing something that is interesting, important, and will result in actions that will move us forward?<\/p>\n<p>The choice is yours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cPeople who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 ~ \u00a0Thomas Sowell \u201cHas anyone ever said, \u2018I wish I could go to more meetings today?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 ~ \u00a0Matt Mullenweg \u201cMeetings are indispensable when you don&#8217;t want to do anything.\u201d\u00a0 ~ \u00a0John Kenneth Galbraith I was going to say that meetings get a bad rap,<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/majority-meetings-discussions-lead-decisions\/\">Read More\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,36,33,30,127,26,22,20],"tags":[129],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":931,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}