Do the meetings at your credit union suck?

by: Sean McDonald

A recent study estimated that 32 BILLION dollars is wasted globally because of unproductive meetings.

I’ve never been a big fan of meetings. Let me clarify that – I don’t like having meetings or attending meetings just to “meet.” I also don’t like meetings that do not have an agenda, a start time, and an end time. Think about it – have you ever walked out of a meeting thinking, “what was the point of that?” I bet you’re nodding right now. That’s good. Some organizations have decided that they “must” have a staff meeting or management meeting every week on a certain day at a certain time. That’s fine – as long as there is new information discussed. But if you have to work too hard to come up with things to talk about, you don’t need a meeting.

Now, every meeting you attend will not be akin to a Bruce Springsteen concert. For the record, I’ve seen Bruce several times on a concert stage and have never walked out of a show thinking, “what was the point of that?” Of course, it is a good idea for management to get together in the same room fro time to time to review where projects stand. But “making progress” is never an acceptable answer in a meeting. And simply going over what is currently in progress isn’t enough of a reason to take people away from actually working on those projects. There has to be more to your meetings.

So, it’s time for organizations to make meetings matter. Here are 5 suggestions on how to do just that:

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