Meeting Madness: Save Your Time (and Sanity)!

<blockquote> “If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be &sbquo;meetings.’” – Dave Barry, American Journalist </blockquote> Vacation time is over — everybody is back at work. Actually, it seems more like everyone is back in meetings. To me, it feels like agreeing on appointments has never been more challenging. Lunch breaks are broken. People get jumpy when you call them without an appointment. Next workshop or training dates? Maybe January 2024. Microsoft Research using participants‘ EEGs proves that back-to-back meetings accumulate stress. Harvard Business Review reports that 71% of senior managers consider meetings unproductive and inefficient, as do 92% of their employees. A survey by &bdquo;The Muse“ reveals that approximately 67% of meetings are considered failures. Nevertheless, the number of attendees did increase by 13.5% compared to pre-pandemic levels. As a result, more than 90% of workers multi-task in meetings. U of North Carolina’s Prof. Stephen G. Rogelberg estimates that the flood of meetings costs a company approximately USD 25.000 per employee and year. I could go on, and the stats are damning. But what’s the cause of this &bdquo;Meeting Madness“ (as HBR already titled in 2017)? You get different answers depending on who you ask (or read). Here are the top four from my perspective as a consultant and manager: <a href="https://medium.com/@ggerling/meeting-madness-save-your-time-and-sanity-28784b8d68c9">Website</a>