Have You Heard of Seth Godin Meeting Rules?

Anyone who has read book writer Seth Godin suggestions for stopping unproductive meetings and still finds himself and his team drowning in meetings should continue reading this post because it is a quick reminder of the importance of seriously communicating to your team members how important is limiting the time spent in meetings and conferences and how crucial it is getting something out of every minute spent consulting in group. The biggest challenge is to figure out how to keep everyone engaged, focused, and productive during the meeting. The challenge is even greater when meetings are made online. Seth’s ideas around building a productive system for the meeting are worth studying and they include:

Understanding that the first thing that should be considered the meeting is that all problems are not the same and meetings held to solve those problems don’t have to be the same and they don’t have to be of the same length too.

Prepare in advance and invite attendees to do the same. Every meeting requires preparation. A way to do that is to provide attendees with enough information about the meeting before getting together.

One of my favorites is about funding meeting coffee. Any person who is 2 minutes late than the last person to join the meeting has to pay a fine of 10 U.S Dollars to the coffee fund. Anyone who is not adding value to the meeting should leave because his none responsive presence will slow others’ efforts. He will never miss any decision in the meeting and his teammates will employ various communication methods to update him with the meeting decisions.

Another suggestion is to bring an egg timer to the meeting. Whenever it goes off, you have a reason to leave. Whether the goal of the meeting is getting done and all constraints are getting off or not, staying in the meeting and not being able to deliver is a waste of time and money and doesn’t contribute to problem-solving.