{"id":921,"date":"2013-05-20T09:50:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T09:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cmwlab.com\/blog\/?p=921"},"modified":"2025-04-15T08:52:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T08:52:11","slug":"meeting-motivations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cmwlab.com\/blog\/meeting-motivations\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Motivations: When More is Just More"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are in business, you are in meetings. A two-person shop may have coffee to discuss issues or it could be the granddaddy-of-them-all, the global teleconference, all-employee type with a bonus auditorium full of locals. When you meet with others on your team or your entire staff, you help set process alignment, define requirements, and share company goals and strategies.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

\r\n\"CMW<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\u201cMy calendar had somewhere between 25 to 30 hours dedicated to meetings each week.\u201d<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n

However, could you be an over-meeter? At one point in my career, I was in a position where I had to interact with a broad range of groups. My calendar<\/a> had somewhere between twenty-five to thirty hours dedicated to meetings each week. Somehow, I was supposed to attend these meetings, address any issues that arose from them and still do my core job. I proclaim that I\u2019m an excellent multi-tasker<\/a>, but my ability to give proper attention to each meeting and its resulting output, was merely adequate. I had no time to mentally delve into issues and often chose the easiest answer, which may or may not be good for the long-term benefit of the company.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\"meeting\"\r\n\r\n

I had a conversation with my son recently that reminded me of the meeting overload I had lived with for several years. My son worked for over a year at a national cell phone company\u2019s small and medium business division. His daily routine was to go to a nearby location and sign-in every morning, check-in with his manager and then begin his day of working with customers. Meetings were held once a week. When he decided to relocate to Houston, he encountered a \u2018new paradigm<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

He was welcomed in Houston as he has been a top producer nationwide for the company. However, his first instruction was that he needed to go in for a sales meeting every day in the heart of the city. He drove an hour to get to the meeting, spent about an hour getting informed and motivated and then drove back to his side of town to begin contacting his customers. In his efficient wording, \u201cWhat a waste!<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n

What was so valuable in these daily sales meetings that required such an expenditure of time? Why was one regional location meeting every day while other regions were top producers without the constant gatherings? Maybe the Houston manager was not empowering his people to act on their own or simply hadn\u2019t done any analysis on the pros<\/em> and cons<\/em> of such a frequent meeting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n

Some considerations that will help determine if you are having too many meetings:<\/p>\r\n\r\n