Peter Drucker states in his book, The Effective Executive, “We meet because people holding different jobs have to cooperate to get a specific task done. We meet because the knowledge and experience needed in a specific situation are not available in one head, but have to be pieced together out of the knowledge and experience of several people.” However in todays workplace I feel that meetings have been overused and have reached a stage where they have become more of an impediment than a catalyst.

Effective meetings are critical to any business whether you are a 2 person startup or a multinational organization. They are the building blocks of effective communication throughout an organization. You can have three kinds of meetings, good ones, bad ones or unnecessary ones. Effective meetings are ones where there is a prepared agenda, focused and time bound, encourage participation, decisions are made and actions items are assigned with completion dates. These factors are the basis for any effective meeting.

Meetings are a direct cost to any organization. The hours which are spent by the participants in unnecessary or ineffective meetings add up. We have to ensure that even at a startup company meetings are well planned out as losing focus during a meeting is  simple if it is not controlled. Using these principles I have been able to achieve more effective meetings which have had a direct impact on efficiency, team morale and collaborative decision making. During the course of the following week I will highlight each factor in a lot more detail. I look forward to any comments or feedback along the way from readers who have been able to make their meetings more effective.