Cameron Herold, author of Meetings Suck, lays out two rules: invite only people who will actively contribute, and start exactly on time. Being late signals disrespect to everyone in the room.
Chapters
Years ago, I wrote a book called Meetings Suck, and the reality is meetings don't suck. We suck at running meetings. Let me give you a crash course on how to run highly effective meetings inside of your company. Number 1, only invite people to the meeting who you want to contribute. If you're not willing to give them a seat and give them a chair and let them talk, don't invite them into the meeting in the first place. They'd rather sit at their desk doing the work that they're doing. Every meeting has to start exactly on time, which means you need to finish every phone call and finish every Zoom meeting 5 minutes early, which gives you time to go down the hall, talk to your assistant, get a cup of coffee, sit down at your desk, and start that meeting exactly on time. Practice the whole saying of, if you're not 5 minutes early, you're late. And if you're showing up to a meeting saying, oh, sorry, I'm late, what you're really saying is, F you, I'm disrespectful, my time is more valuable than yours. So I go into this skill of running highly effective meetings in much more detail. Go check out investinyourleaders.com, check out the effective meetings module, and you will no longer be complaining that meetings suck because you'll realize that it's just us that sucks at running meetings.
