SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
How effective are your team’s staff meetings?
- Very — We are efficient and get a lot done: 20%
- Kind of — We get some things done, but they can be painful: 48%
- Not very — We don’t get a lot done, and we waste a lot of time: 21%
- Not at all — Our staff meetings are horrible, and I hate them: 10%
Simplify and Streamline. Staff meetings are terrible because we’re lazy and we allow them to be. The laziness aspect is attributable to not being thoughtful and planning what content will or will not be discussed. Invest the time thinking through the agenda and strip off items that can be covered in an email. Manage by exception. Focus on the decision at hand and don’t rehash old history everyone knows. Finally, if there’s no need to meet, don’t meet. Just because it’s on the calendar, that doesn’t mean it has to happen. If you follow the core principles of good staff meetings, you can make them much less painful than they currently are.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of the upcoming book “The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”