Meetings

Meetings are an important communication tool. Nothing can replace a gathering of people for a sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Some examples of meetings are Open Meetings and ConCom Meetings. Meetings can be associated with a party or other event to make them more social, or not, to keep them focused on business at hand. The formality of the meeting and its format is largely dictated by the type of business to be conducted, and its urgency. Meeting new people and familiarizing them to the organization might be best done in a reception or party atmosphere, whereas discussing the terms of a contract may not go well with beer and chips.

A Board Meeting is another common type of meeting, which can either be public or limited to a Board of Directors.

In any case, a meeting should have an Agenda published in advance, as well as some sort of rules of order with regard to how the meeting proceeds. Formal meetings, and larger groups, often adopt Robert's Rules of Order. Robert's Rules are an excellent way of maintaining meeting efficiency, but they are lengthy and can be a bit unwieldy to learn in depth. Smaller groups will often amend Robert's Rules to a bare minimum for conductinig business.

There are often concerns about meetings being a waste of time. This is a valid concern (and can contribute to Burnout) and should be addressed by seriously considering which people are likely to be required to act on the business at hand. There is no point in requiring the attendance of unnecessary people (though the meeting may be open to any that wish to attend). Correspondingly, the frequency of meetings should be governed by the pace of business. Ideally, meetings should be held often enough to detect and dispense with problems before they become unmanageable. If you find that each new meeting is dealing with a new crisis, then perhaps they should be happening more frequently, to prevent the crisis at an earlier stage. On the other hand, if no significant new business has occured since the last meeting, then perhaps that is an opportunity to cancel that meeting.

The duration of the meeting should be limited to what can reasonably be accomodated by the participant's attention spans and other life events. Marathon meetings of four hour duration and more should be avoided. Something less than two to three hours in one sitting would be most desireable in most cases. If there is more business to be discussed than can fit in that time, schedule another session after an appropriate break.