meetings, meetings, meetings...sorry, my mute button was on

My second wish for 2021 (first one is obvious) is for a reduction in meetings. Even prior to the pandemic it was happening; there is a love of meetings and it has gotten out of control. I've been involved in many (many, many) work "flavor of the day" projects in trying to better reduce and manage meetings but all seem to end up in the trash after the facilitators see a shiny object, move on to another project and things move back to what they were with the loudest individuals getting their word in. 

The latest flavor of the day involves fancy terminology in the meeting titles like retrospective, checkpoint, refinement, stand-up, follow-up, sprint, agile, scrum, biweekly update, elaboration, and last but not least, 'planning'. I have spent up to six hours of the work day logged into video conference calls (audio only - no video for me thank you).

My two cents for fixing it. The meeting host needs to know what he/she is talking about and take charge of the meeting. Get a meeting facilitator like John McLaughlin of The McLaughlin Group      (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOLF_D7JVZM). Too much lollygagging leads to long calls and everyone starts multi-tasking/day dreaming after about 10 minutes of that. Keep it short and simple. Also, don't even think about a call after lunch. Get it done early and let everyone spend the remainder of the work day focused on the tasks at hand. Kind of like the old Hill Street Blues show where the head cop would address the troops on the matters of the day in the morning and leave them off with a, "be careful out there." No refinement, follow-up or retrospective needed.

I'd like to write more but have to get to a meeting...

Trail Head