Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

As a general rule, meetings make individuals perform below their capacity and skill levels.

The most common meeting in my experience is the status meeting, where everyone gets together and reports on what they’ve accomplished. If it’s a small group, these are usually fine because you already have familiarity with the tasks. But when you get a large group together, which has diverse tasks and goals, there is impending disaster. Bad meetings I’ve attended often involve people discussing details that nobody else at the table understands or possibly cares about — the sort of thing that should happen one-on-one or in a small group, as everyone else sits there, trying not to fall asleep.