Are meetings in your organization time-wasting, energy-sapping affairs? A frequent suggestion to deal with this problem is to eliminate all meetings. What if instead of eliminating all meetings you made every meeting in your organization optional? Here is what would happen.
- People would vote with their feet about a meeting’s value.
- Conversations would spark about the meetings worth
- Interest and contribution would drive meeting attendance
- The meeting agenda would focus on what participants find important
- Meeting organizers would pay more attention to how they invite people to participate, knowing that they might say no to their invitation
- Challenges to be met, decisions to be made, what you would learn, what you could contribute, and time well spent, would become the criteria for deciding which meetings you would attend.
- Your choice to attend or not attend a meeting would open up new possibilities for yourself and for those who choose to attend the meeting.
What do you think would happen if meetings were truly optional?