Great post (and COMMENTS) on the Tom Peters blog about how to make meetings efficient.
I deal with a lot of online meetings and the most effective ones are structured – not completely structured but still structured.
The most important rule that comes out of a good meeting techniques is to have an objective. If you don’t have an objective for the meeting, then don’t have it. A status report is NOT an objective – sharing critical issues with others is. But if no one has anything to share, then it’s simply not worth meeting.
That said, there is a certain value of the “face-to-face” which no one can deny (and Ted knows I’ve tried – no way to get back to the original post). They really need to get video conferencing working better – has anyone tried the new video conferencing in MSN Messenger?. Maybe that will make it easier for “virtual” users to work together.
Skype goes a long way but it can still go further.
tompeters! management consulting leadership training development project management