« Quick answer to Marc Orchant about the new seminar | Main | How things really get done around here... »
May 18, 2005
Meetings, meetings, everywhere...
...and not a stop to think.
Been running into a lot of this lately: serious meeting overwhelm. Lots of reasons for this, but I heard a new one that I hadn't really been aware of before. Had dinner last week with Dr. Scott Lemaire, a thoracic surgeon with St. Luke's Hospital in Houston and associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. Scott's one of those folks who "just happened to pick up" GTD in a bookstore, and since has become a convert. As we were talking about the too-many-meetings disease, especially in healthcare, he said: "you have to go to meetings just to protect your resources!" If you're not there, they may take your budget, reallocate your staff, take your space... who knows!? Dreadful thought. Not sure there's a good answer to that one, except bringing lots of work to do while you're sitting there guarding the fort.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potetial, that word would be: "meetings." - Dave Barry
Posted by David at May 18, 2005 10:37 PM
Comments
Meetings in healthcare--like an insidious disease! At least bringing work to do makes me feel a little productive--I carry a heavy plastic folder with clear plastic front overlay. Schedule in front overlay and processing or reading in the folder. However, at small meeting tables it can come across as disengaged in the meeting to do this work. At those times a mind sweep can be done.
David--there's another whole market out there for how to cure--or at least manage this "meetingitis" in healthcare. It's keeping us away from what really matters--the patients.
Posted by: Donna at May 19, 2005 03:29 AM
Meetings don't have to be dreadful and/or unproductive. I've had a lot of success helping my coaching clients learn how to prepare for, conduct and follow up on meetings.
Like anything else, meeting management is a skill that can be learned. I teach a three step process: 1) Prepare, 2) Structure and Control the Discussion, and 3) Follow up.
Feel free to e mail me for the slides I use with my clients.
Bud Bilanich
Posted by: Bud Bilanich at May 24, 2005 12:51 AM
