Five Alternatives to Meetings

Meetings are like family functions; nobody really wants to go to them, someone is always late and/or complaining, and there is always that one person who only comes along for the snacks.
Although they are often considered the best way of communicating seemingly important information or bringing together a group of people for “team building purposes”, meetings can actually be the very opposite.
Regardless of good intentions, they are often a waste of time and therefore highly unproductive for those involved.
To establish if a traditional meeting is your best foot forward, you first need to ask yourself a few questions: What is my message? Who needs to hear it? How urgent is it? And the most critical – is a meeting really the best way to communicate it?
Here are a few alternatives to traditional meeting methods and why they may be more beneficial to you.
Face to face
Does your meeting really need to involve all 10 people at once, or will a quick face to face chat with each person suffice? Remember, not everybody involved in a project needs to know about each aspect of what is being discussed, so a 20 minute chat with everybody is 20 minutes out of someone’s day that doesn’t need to be there.
Smaller groups
Perhaps condensing the meeting size would be more effective. If face to face with everybody is too much for the person holding the meeting, then consider who needs to be informed about the same things and condense your groups and meeting time accordingly.
Online discussion groups
Physical presence at a meeting is often an issue. Getting to and from a meeting place, no matter how close by, can take a good chunk of time out of someone’s day, so consider using instant messaging or online discussions as an alternative.
It will allow people to respond as they wish without having to get to a meeting place, and if they want to, they can also multi-task, saving them from dropping one subject to hop to another.
Digital space
Online places such as Google Docs or Basecamp are a very effective way for people working on the same project to share documents, ideas and delegate tasks, without having to actually meet. Imagine being able to completely manage a project without even having to leave your desk. The time saved on physical meetings could be spent on the project itself.
Notifications and updates
If you intended to hold a meeting to update members of staff on a particular subject or issue, consider writing up a notification for people to read in their own time. This could then be posted on an actual office notice board, an online notice board via the staff intranet, or simply put in an email. If a message doesn’t need to be verbally communicated consider sharing it another way.
By Terri Cluckie