To meet… or not to meet…
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, meetings have both costs and benefits. Figuring out both these aspects, and the balance between them, can help decide whether or not to hold a meeting.
These costs and benefits have three aspects: economic, political and cultural. Economic is fairly straightforward these days. What resources (including staff time, facilitation, venue/catering and materials) will we need to devote before, during and after the event?
What is the balance between getting people together face-to-face, versus online, versus working with them individually?
Political aspects are almost as straightforward. What decisions will be required, made in what ways and with what impacts?
This also influences the organisation’s culture. Genuinely participatory processes tend to build commitment from those involved. Conversely, command and control processes tend to lead to bum preserving.
Whichever way the decision goes, it pays to plan carefully so as maximise the return on your efforts.
July 2nd, 2006 at 8:26 am
David, working as I do in a geographically distributed organisation where most communication is by email, I have become very conscious of the advantages of physical meetings in creating links and shortening learning curves.
When I was working in a conventional organisation I used to share the common view that there were too many meetings, even if sometimes guilty of calling too many myself. Certainly my then staff would probably say I did.
Now I think that meetings are greatly undervalued. We know that interaction is required to lay the base for common action. We know that people don’t read emails and that, in any case, even if an apparently common view is formed via this method, there may in fact not be real common understanding.
So lets bring on meetings!