Let’s circle back to the topic of meetings, and think outside the box about how we can remove their pain points.
Ah, the office. In our minds it’s an idealized sanctuary of productivity, the place we go to get stuff done. The place where we find the people and resources that we need (both in perfect working order) to check off the boxes on our never-ending to-do lists.
In reality, though, most offices are nothing like this. If they were, we wouldn’t head to coffee shops when we really need to make some headway. Why is this? There are any number of reasons, but a lot of you seem to assign most of the blame on meetings. Seen as a necessary evil to some, they are an annoying interruption to others.
The truth is meetings will always be a part of our work lives. They are how information gets disseminated, and projects get moved forward collectively. But that doesn’t mean they have to suck.
Igloo Software, makers of intranet software, sought to quantify how we all really feel about meetings, and came up with some interesting results:
In order to determine what makes a meeting useful, we surveyed 1,000 people who have worked in an office environment on how they feel about meetings, covering everything from buzzwords to conference calls. Many agree on a few certain points: No one should use the phrase “think outside the box,” meetings should only be scheduled when absolutely necessary, and conference calls should never take place in noisy spaces with poor reception.
They put their results in infographic form:
