Find a valid reason for excusing yourself from a meeting. Ask the caller for the purpose of the meeting, who is going to attend and what is the reason for your attendance.
Extend your challenge to those meetings you call yourself. Ask yourself, "Is there an alternative for accomplishing the desired result?" This is especially important for regularly scheduled meetings.
Expound often upon your ideas relating to the wastefulness of most meetings.
Shorten meetings by starting at a time with the ending in mind. For instance, thirty minutes will be sufficient for the agenda – call the meeting for a half hour before lunchtime. At other times, set an ending time and select a chairperson with the ability to enforce it.
Invite fewer people to a meeting. Apply the appropriate amount of human relations 'grease' or balm to the uninvited.
Similar to our suggestion about gaining respect for the value of your time, apply that process to meetings.
Form smaller ad hoc task groups where heuristic planning is focused upon action.
If meetings are called to only to distribute information, try emails to your email address book, memos, conference calls (now available to small businesses and individuals by most telephone companies), personal visits to informal or formal 'centers' (lead hand in shipping area, for example) of communication. The latter is an opportunity for developing a promising supervisor.
Future maxims or skills will be dealing with 'groupthink,' group dynamics and group decision making among other such group topics.
Stories from members will add great value to these maxims
Please post your story by emailing it to max@unclemaxsays.com.
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