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It’s ten o’clock and I’m already experiencing a burgeoning feel of dread. I know that it is creeping up on me. I can’t escape it. I never can. At one o’clock, it will have me firmly in its clutches.

Yes, it is the dread beast known as “the meeting,” familiar to all of us who work in professional positions. Our schedules our full of them; indeed, tracking them is the very reason that our calendars must exist. We accept them as a fact of our professional lives, knowing we can’t avoid them. At the same time, we experience acute frustration at what we usually perceive as a waste of our valuable time. Rarely, though, do we do anything to remedy the situation; we just pray for cancellation.

I consider myself lucky that my schedule averages two meetings per day of about an hour each most of the time. But then I look at a day like next Tuesday. It already has three meetings and I suspect it will have at least one more by the time I get there. And none of them are in the building in which office is housed, meaning I need to allow for travel time. If I’m lucky, I will have a little less than half my day free to accomplish “actual work,” defined as the stuff that happens between meetings and the watercooler.

Whether one works in the morass of academe or in your typical corporate office, meetings are a fact of life that won’t go away, so the big question is: what can we do to turn them around and make them productive time? Here are my quick and easy suggestions:

• Pay attention and make sure others are paying attention. Don’t be that person who cannot put away his email and text messaging during meetings, distracting others from the task.
• Proactively help keep the meeting on task. If the conversation starts to veer off the agenda, there’s nothing wrong with interjecting, “That’s a great idea, but I suggest we stick to the issue at hand and save that for a future meeting.” Nine times out of ten, it works.
• Don’t hold a meeting just for the sake of holding a meeting. A couple weeks ago, I was prepping for a regularly scheduled meeting when I realized that I had absolutely nothing to put on the agenda. So I cancelled it and told everyone see you in two weeks. Likewise, if you finish early, let everyone go early!
• Use agendas and minutes as tools to define the meeting. Minutes will tell you where you’ve been and a good agenda keeps you on track with where you are going. Limit the amount of time that is not planned out. (This relates back to the previous suggestion!)
• Make sure that you’re not just making announcements. Straightforward communication of information can happen through other media. Reserve meeting time for issues that require discussion.
• A good laugh can do wonders for your attitude. Never underestimate the power of a good laugh to make people feel that a meeting is worthwhile. While sitting down with a half dozen of my colleagues last week, an inadvertent slip of the tongue and the ensuing chatter brought new energy to the room. Meetings are a chance to be collegial as well as productive.

Maybe you have a suggestion or two about what makes for a good meeting? (Aside from the obvious “The only good meeting is a dead meeting.”) Talk back with your comments and let us know!

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