Future Fundraising Now

Waste less of your time in meetings

—

by

Jeff Brooks
in

Who likes meetings? Somebody must, especially in the nonprofit sector. We’re in meetings all the time.

An often-quoted estimate by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said that unnecessary meetings cost the U.S. economy $37 billion a year. Personally, I think that’s a serious underestimate.

If you’d like to lower the number of useless meetings in your life — and decrease the uselessness of those you can’t get rid of, cheuck out this Daily Dose post: Seven Ways to Kill Your Meetings and Unleash Productivity. Here they are:


  1. Have a limited, focused agenda.
  2. Reconsider regularly scheduled meetings.
  3. Cut the attendee list.
  4. Shorten the timeframe.
  5. Use the internet.
  6. Send a memo.
  7. Reinvent your meetings.

    Comments

    2 responses to “Waste less of your time in meetings”

    1. Kenny Jahng Avatar
      Kenny Jahng

      Our organization just hosted Al Pittampalli, author of The Modern Meeting Manifesto (http://www.bit.ly/readthisbeforeournextmeeting).
      One of his core points is that meetings are not for decision making. Meetings are for conflict or resolution around decisions that should be made with the least # of people necessary outside of meetings.
      The time suck for organizations is from being addicted to informational meetings where it is just dissemination of data/info.
      After embracing some of the prescriptions, we’ve eliminated hundreds of manhours of weekly meeting time — and yet our systems still work.
      Kenny Jahng
      http://www.twitter.com/@kennyjahng

    2. Kenny Jahng Avatar
      Kenny Jahng

      Our organization just hosted Al Pittampalli, author of The Modern Meeting Manifesto (http://www.bit.ly/readthisbeforeournextmeeting).
      One of his core points is that meetings are not for decision making. Meetings are for conflict or resolution around decisions that should be made with the least # of people necessary outside of meetings.
      The time suck for organizations is from being addicted to informational meetings where it is just dissemination of data/info.
      After embracing some of the prescriptions, we’ve eliminated hundreds of manhours of weekly meeting time — and yet our systems still work.
      Kenny Jahng
      http://www.twitter.com/@kennyjahng

    Leave a Reply

    What this blog is about

    The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It’s not about any technology, medium, or technique. It’s about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It’s already here. More.

    Blog policies

    Subscribe

    Get new posts by email:

    About the blogger

    Jeff BrooksJeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 35 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

    Archives

    Blogroll

    Categories

    Search the blog

    The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It’s not about any technology, medium, or technique. It’s about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It’s already here. More.

    Recent Comments

    About the blogger

    Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you’ll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com.