“Meetings are the factory floor for knowledge workers.” Dick Axelrod
There are probably hundreds of articles floating through the web “demonizing” meetings, depicting the majority of meetings to be unproductive and a complete waste of time and money. Having worked in the engineering services business for years and, through this experience relying heavily on meetings for team alignment, collaboration, innovation and production, I have never agreed with these articles. So, when I saw this quote from Mr. Axelrod I was very curious to understand his side of the story.
His philosophy is basically that meetings are where a lot of work gets done or should get done in today’s organizations. Because of the complexity of business today and the interaction that is needed between so many different components of a business (internal and external to the business), people must meet face to face or virtually in order to have alignment in the business. Now, not all meetings are run properly so not all meetings are productive (see the Tripp Crosby youtube video for an example ). Axelrod goes on to provide a solid model and methodology for running meetings that are focused and productive. See his book Let’s Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done (BK Business)