DOES YOUR NONPROFIT MEETING HAVE "SUCK POTENTIAL"?

an exploration of anti-meeting sentiment in the blogosphere

Happiness runs in a circular motion/ thought is just a little boat upon the sea/ everybody is a part of everything anyway/ you can have it all if you let yourself be. Donovan, 1969

Happiness. Work Meetings. What do these two have in common? If you answered "nothing", you are not alone. To find like-minded individuals, Google "I hate meetings" for 12,000 hits (make sure to type the "quotes" or you'll get ten zillion hits)!

With that, it's time to announce my latest del.icio.us tag: IHateMeetings

Matt Raible in his April, 2006 post "Tips for Productivity and Happiness and Work" offers the following advice:
Avoid meetings at all costs. Find a way to walk out of meetings that are unproductive, don't concern you, or spiral into two co-workers bitching at each other. While meetings in general are a waste of time, some are worse than others. Establish your policy of walking out early on and folks will respect you have stuff to do. Of course, if you aren't a noticeably productive individual,walking out of a meeting can be perceived as being simply "not a team player", which isn't a good idea.

Among Matt's pearls of wisdom (sure to freak out nonprofit managers): work with a beer on your desk. Now there's an idea!

Or you may stick around and mutter “What’s the point? What’s the point?” or “My time is worth money!” Not likely to have any effect, so far I have yet to see a corporation who functions without these monstrosities we call meetings.
Ever want to get out of meeting? When is it time to bail? Writing under a pseudonym, blogger "Rands"has a hilarious post called Agenda Detection.

Rands blogs on the struggle to identify whether or not a meeting has “suck potential”, identifying the “players and the pawns” and figuring out when to “bail”.

I'll file Tyler Cohen's post Against Brainstorming here as well. In his blog Marginal Revolution, Tyler explores the "illusion of group of productivity”.

So much to say, so little time, but I've got a meeting to go to!


Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

BIRTH OF A BLOG: GUERILLA MARKETING, EFFECTIVE USE OF TECHNOLOGY & GOOD CONTENT WIN THE DAY

THE LIES PEOPLE TELL US (AND THE ONES WE TELL OURSELVES)

THE SAD & THE FUNNY: NONPROFIT JOBS CORNER