I sometimes fall into the trap of forgetting that a meeting is a vehicle for things to happen, not a thing that makes things happen. We all know the tropes about “this meeting should have been an email.” All of us have attended those meetings (possibly multiple today alone). But similarly, all of us have booked those meetings – even if we had the best of intentions at the time.
- When we think about project management, things like project scope, plans, timelines, roles, and responsibilities are things that should be worked out before the meeting, not during the meeting.
- When we look at managing our teams, a weekly team call is not a replacement for open, empathetic one-on-one conversations about how things are going.
- When things are going wrong, an ad hoc call with everyone on the line seldom works when you just start yelling and moaning that things need to get fixed without giving time or attention to discussion of solutions.
It can be tempting to look at a calendar booked full of meetings and hope that those meetings will solve all the problems they are meant to solve. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case. Time before, after, and strong management during is critical to getting things right.
As the best people I know say, “Hope is not a strategy.”