When is a Meeting Necessary?

Posted by Lenette Wells on Friday, April 10, 2015

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Whether you are working through next year’s budget, looking at your list of deferred maintenance projects, or planning to implement a specific project, having conversations and gleaning input and direction from others is essential to making informed and confident decisions. So what do we [seemingly always] do? - We have meetings! And technology has made it ever-increasingly easy to plan and schedule meetings, further contributing to a meeting being a default response, packing your calendar full. But, all those meetings cost you and others a lot of time; time that you need to ensure is not being wasted, by you or by others.

So, which meetings do we need and which ones might be time better spent elsewhere? I thought this article “Do You really Need To hold That Meeting” from the Harvard Business Review gave a helpful process chart [below] and specific explanation on being strategic about when to call meetings. As the author, Elizabeth Grace Saunders, says, “With the right decision-making process, you can radically reduce the number of meetings you attend and increase the amount of work that gets done.”

Meeting Decision Flow Chart

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Lenette Wells, AIA

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Categories: Buildings & Campus

Tagged: Budgeting & Funding  |  Project Management  |  Facility Planning & Management

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