Making Meetings More Useful
© Coert Visser and Gwenda Schlundt Bodien (2005) “We have so many meetings in this organization but they lead to nothing but frustration. The wrong topics are on the agenda and even those topics aren’t handled properly. Meetings always start too late and are always drawn out. I am sick and tired of it!” – A manager in a large organization Meetings can be more useful! Inefficient meetings are a pain to many managers and employees. Recent research by Microsoft among 38.000 respondents in 200 countries showed that employees are in meetings on average for 5,6 hours a week and according to them no less than 69 percent of this time leads to nothing at all. So it is no wonder that meetings often take away participants’ energy and are seen as useless. By using a success-focused approach in meetings they can be much more effective and less frustrating. The success perspective focuses constantly on making and keeping meetings useful for all participants. This works by posing a special kind of ...