Faster meetings

Here’s a tool that will reduce hour-long meetings by half

People who know me well know I love meetings—at least those that are run well.

My career led me to a role that required me to sit on a lot of committees—served as secretary or chair for about half of them. Because of the amount of time these meetings would take, I wanted to find ways to run them more effectively and efficiently. And this saved me and others a lot of time (a precious commodity).

I have a lot of resources on effective meetings, and I’m always looking for more. One I’ve found is part of the Nano Tools for Leaders by Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. This particular nano tool is called The 25-Minute Meeting and it’s a great guide on how to reduce the typically hour-long meeting to just 25 minutes. The tool is honest enough to note it applies best to meetings of no more than five people, but any saving is a good one.

The 25-Minute Meeting provides three major action steps: set up; show up, and; speak up. It provides a description and simple-to-follow actions points for each step. A short case study shows how one leader makes use of it.

But there’s one issue with the tool: it relies on you being prepared to change a lifetime of habits and persist during the transition while others in your team adopt it. In my experience, few people have the will to make such changes, even though they can halve the time they spend in meetings.

Are you up for the challenge?

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Photograph: Fauxels from Pexels.