I have to say, in general 95% of meetings I’ve attended have been constructive and productive.
We vid conf a lot too, which saves rattling around the country.
And the smartphone users tend to be holding blackberrys, which gives you a little hint as to the culprits.
I’m just off to another..
(sent from SG3)

Only ones that I chair and minute. 30 mins is the maximum duration.

I pick one topic; call only people who can usefully contribute; we discuss the topic and I listen to views; I decide what to do; I write it in an email to those who attended and send it.

Ideally we stand at a whiteboard and sketch the solution which I photograph with my phone and attach to the email. It saves typing.

Fin

Yes, but only ones inside my own workplace.

Many meetings should end with an honest appraisal of whether anything has been achieved and whether it is worth meeting again, rather than routinely scheduling the next date.

‘Has anyone ever been to a meeting….’….No 😥

‘Has anyone ever been to a meeting….’….No

me neither

How about a ‘webinar’? I have an invite to one at work, what should be my reply and more importantly what the hell is it?! 😯

Webinar? Imagine the bastard off-spring of a conference call and a powerpoint. It’s that good.

You can play with your phone and nobody will notice, though

Pointless in my workplace .
Working with a mouthy bully who shouts you down , and a directionless boss does not make for useful time spent.
Walked out of a meeting with the last shower.
” You got on a plane to Cyprus whilst the receivers were removing anything of value for a 2 week holiday “.
Her reply.- ” Thats not true we didnt do that “
Me,”OK then Im not going to sit here and be lied to and i have more important things to be getting on with . “
” Please come back , we havent finished the meeting “
” I was wrong about Cyprus wasnt I “
” Yes “
” It was Crete”

Ideally we stand at a whiteboard and sketch the solution which I photograph with my phone and attach to the email. It saves typing.

?

Company I used to work for would have a whole day long meeting once a month, the purpose of which was, I’m sure, to make me look for a new position without a bunch of meandering, directionless sycophants at the helm.

I had a genuinely useful and in fact essential meeting, a couple of months ago. It’s set a bit of an unrealistic expectation tbh.

Critical meeting took place today. Be in Ireland for 9 am start.

Got up at 4:20

Got to Manc airport at 6.

Flew at 6:50

Landed at Belfast at 7:45

Director sauntered through security at 9:50.

Meeting started at 11

Critical information shared in 7 minutes, actions agreed in 5 minutes.

Why do people never tell all on conference calls?

Not in the best mood….

Most of my meetings are a good use – but that’s because I hit them from the outset with a clear 4 step “elevator pitch”:

– Why I am here
– This is where we are
– This is where we need to be
– We need to agree a solution to get from where we are now to where we need to be, and we need to do it today.

Too often meetings aren’t focused, nobody takes control and forces the issue to a defined conclusion. They rapidly slide into little more than counselling sessions where people get to vent their opinions and discuss reasons why stuff can’t happen, rather than ways it can.

This thread is ace.

50% of the meetings I attend are rubbish, some are interesting and about 20% actually enable something to happen. When I first started as an admin I did the room arrangements for a meeting and didn’t order biscuits. The first 20 minutes were spent discussing whether to source biscuits, failing to find biscuits then discussing if someone should actually go out of the building into the town and buy some. They settled on a No in the end but for the next meeting I had 10 emails reminding me to book them. Attendees were made up of pretty senior local authority, local NHS and Police service personnel so I should have expected no less really.

Oh and one I went to today, the person that called the meeting was late then rushed in, sat down —–silence. So someone pipes up ‘umm are you chairing, we didn’t have an agenda’ to which the reply was ‘oh I can if you like’ —–silence. Didn’t have a clue what was going on so after 40 minutes of cobbling something together we gave up and left.

Does anyone ever drop anyone in the s*** in meetings. I did today because I was so cross at how useless they seem to be and then blame it on others

Exactly RichPenny!

The meetings im forced to attend rarely have agenda and consist of posturing by managers who don’t know what they don’t know. Nothing is recorded. What was the point?

My favourite is when people decide to offer their opinion on legal issues.

I do this quite often – despite not being a lawyer – bizarrely because I am basing my view on previous experience I am quite often right, not always by any means, but my experience covers a far wider range of issues than most specialist lawyers so I am aware of stuff they have never had to cover before – always best to stay open minded.

The best meeting I ever attended was when a project manager handed out pre written meeting minutes at the start then sat back and said ‘this is what is going to be agreed, does anyone disagree? No one did or to be honest cared. Meeting over and one more middle management ego maniac satiated.

I’m posting this thread to my colleagues.

We’ve started to have “pre-meeting” (meetings about what we need to discuss at the yet to be arranged meeting) WITH ALL OF THE SAME PEOPLE INVOLVED!

Bregante, what about the pre-meeting planning meeting? I kid you not.

I like the meetings in my job. We often sit at our desks or talk to each other and discover serious problems with what we’re trying to do. We have meetings to find stuff out, solve problems and figure out how to get stuff done.

It’s better than sitting at your desk getting exasperated.

I do this quite often – despite not being a lawyer – bizarrely because I am basing my view on previous experience I am quite often right, not always by any means, but my experience covers a far wider range of issues than most specialist lawyers so I am aware of stuff they have never had to cover before – always best to stay open minded.

Sorry, I probably could have been clearer. To me, legal issues are different from commercial issues which have a legal element to them.

Commerical issues are generally helped by input from different people from relevant disciplines, however in the same way that I don’t try to suggest a new way for a construction type person to build stuff, it can be counter productive when they suggest to the room that a bit of legal drafting sent over from clients/funders etc “looks ok” to them.

Some people just seem to use meetings as an opportunity to let everyone know how knowledgable they are about everything. My comment was more of a dig at those type of people, rather than those with relevant experience making themselves useful.

I used to work at a council where one of my senior managers would set an agenda, be really insistent that everyone came prepared to contribute effectively and then completely ignore everything she said and would talk about anything but the agenda items for the next 1.5hrs.
It was truly an art form of wasting peoples time and aggravating them, especially as every project she ran went over time and over budget.

I now don’t have to go to meetings as I’ve been informed by my manager that my role isn’t ‘strategic’ even though i develop and implement policies and procedures that affect the entire organisation. Therefore I now have to do my work from second hand information (often wrong) and have to go track down the people anyway and speak to them 1-2-1, which takes more time… <sigh>

Found it

Meetings, the practical alternative to work!

I’m TDA (technical design authority) and SI (System integrator) on a large system development. I have spent days in planning meetings where my only purpose was “too keep the supplier honest” on technical issues. In 7 hours I spoke twice. I refuse to attend these now.

Pointeless meetings I won’t add value to I decline politely, usually having questioned what value I might add.

Meetings i always attend, those organised by the a deouty project manager, who thinks he’s a techie but in fact is a technical as a turnip, just in case he makes anymore stupid decisions. I think he did technical sales once lol

And yes I play with my smartphone in meetings when I’m bored, must be a techie thing.

I’m not reading all of the above crap because I’m too busy. 😉

In my old job I once had to extend a trip to China by 9 days so I could attend a meeting in Taiwan to discuss a customer’s understanding of a technical document. I got there and he showed me our spec and a competitor’s brochure and asked me to explain why their’s was so much more advanced than ours for the same money. I told him he was reading the wrong product description.

Job done in less than 20 seconds.

Fuming.

Worked on a project at BAA some years ago. On ome occasion I flew to a meeting at Edinburgh airport, whereupon BAA couldn’t supply any steps to get us off the plane. Rolled into the meeting 25 minutes late to be moaned at by BAA technical manager.

I took great delight in pointing out it was their fault I was late

I gave up attending internal meetings a few years ago – 95% of the time they are just a total waste of time…..