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MANAGEMENT | Noah Brier

No More Bad Meetings

An idea that will help put an end to bad meetings everywhere.

November 11, 2006 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 6 COMMENTS

This morning I went to Russel's New York coffee morning. At some point we started chatting about how great the little stop/go button is at Brazilian churrascaria. (For those that haven't been, when you eat there they keep bringing around meat until you turn it over to red.)

We were discussing the merits of having one for your entire life, so you'd be able to turn things off and on at any moment. Then Russell said how great it would be in a meeting, that way when things got bad you could flip it to red. As we built on the idea a little bit, I think a pretty great thing emerged.

So here's the idea.

Everyone has a hidden button, maybe it's under the table, maybe on their chair. Because it's hidden, each person can vote anonymously (there's a bit of Wisdom of Crowds at work here). When you hit the button a light turns from red to green (or off to on). When a majority of the lights go red, the meeting is over. It's that simple.

The beauty of the idea is twofold. One, it would allow the presenter or leader to adjust their strategy based on the real-time feedback of the audience (this would work great for conferences as well). Second, it would put an end to all those terrible meetings where everyone knows it's bad but it just keeps dragging on forever.

Would it actually work? Got any ways to make it better?


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COMMENTS

1orli

although i'm a huge fan of the red/green mallet in churrascarias and do think it'd be a great asset in many other situations, i'm not sure about its effectiveness in meetings. what if one person thinks the meeting should end because they're itching to get home to their boyfriend, another person thinks it should end cause he has to pee, another person is bored, and a fourth person thinks the meeting isn't going anywhere and sees no point in continuing. there are three other people in the meeting who are being productive, but the meeting ends because the majority wants it to. i think that an effective meeting usually starts with the moderator/organizer/leader, whose job it is to make the meeting productive, keep it that way, and end it when it ceases to be. however, i fully advocate using the mallet in other cases, like with your nagging, neurotic jewish mother for example.

November 12, 2006

2Noah Brier

Fair point Orli, but if over half the meeting doesn't want to be there anyway, what's the point? Why not just end the meeting and pick it up again without those people. In the future maybe whoever organized it just won't invite the other three.

November 12, 2006

3orli

i guess so. but isn't it anonymous?

November 13, 2006

4Josh

I hate bad meetings as much as anyone—it's things like them that made me stop working for other people, in fact. I don't even like good meetings that much.

I totally applaud the spirit of the idea, and I think there are workplaces where it could work (although I bet that the exact workplaces where it would work are the ones that wouldn't really need it). But from my experience with your average Big Corporations, I envision an angry man or woman at the head of the table facing a field of red lights and saying to the assembled attendees, "You may want to end this meeting, but this meeting ends when I want to end this meeting." Bad meetings are loathsome, but I don't think they'll go away until bad management goes away.

November 13, 2006

5David Berkowitz

Ever read "Six Thinking Hats"? It has some great ideas for keeping meetings moving forward and making them more productive, thus reducing their time. I'm curious to try it in action - just finished it.

November 13, 2006

6Noah Brier

Orli, it is anonymous, but maybe it would make people a little more observant about whether people are paying attention or not.

Josh, totally agree, not for everywhere.

David, haven't heard of Six Thinking Hats, but will check it out. Any ideas in particular stick out?

Also, check out this article on meetings at Google. They do some cool stuff, like project a giant stopwatch so the meeting doesn't go long. One of the things we talked about at coffee was that no matter how long you set for a meeting it goes that long whether it needs to or not.

November 13, 2006