A well-run meeting is a thing of beauty! I came across this article recently and it made me reflect on why meetings are necessary.
Here are my top five reasons, speaking as a Project Manager:
End the madness of the 43-message-long email chains! A decision or plan of action that can take all day to come fruition over email could take 15 minutes in a meeting.
Get stuff done! Silos are good for farms, not for the workplace. Coordination between departments and teams can be more productive and innovative in a face-to-face setting.
Drive participation. When the whole team is in the same room, it encourages people to contribute to the conversation and not just “phone it in”. Bueller? Bueller?
Avoid miscommunication. In a world of email, IMs, text, Tweets, and posts, it’s easy to forget that non-verbal cues play a major role in communication!
Clarify the (fill-in-the-blank). Whether it’s clarifying scope of the deliverables, the project plan, or changes to a design, it’s much easier to raise your hand and ask a question in a meeting than ask someone, who asks someone else, who eventually asks the PM. 😉