A few years ago, I worked for a Los Angeles company that had a lot of meetings.
The gatherings were long and boring, but I guess it was important for everyone to have their say. At that stage of my personal business evolution, I just accepted the fact that the meeting formats weren't going to change. But something did change them, for the better.
Because the meetings were so long, someone on the team suggested we institute "stand up meetings." Instead of sitting at a traditional conference table, we took the chairs out of the room and ran meetings while standing on our feet. Well, the length of the meetings DRASTICALLY dropped, because people didn't want to stand for long. Meetings went from 30-60 minutes to roughly 1/2 of that while still delivering meaty content. Neat, huh?
Obviously, this system is not possible if you have a long strategic planning session, but it does work. So why not try it yourself?
Susan Sabo's Productivity Cafe has a post this week about making meetings shorter, and more effective. Check the post out by clicking here. [update: Susan has changed her incoming link urls and my original link does not work. In the meantime, here is our resource page on how to organize your office.
Picture courtesy of The Real Estate Solution
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