ABSTRACT
For many members of the general public, and non-managerial staff inside organisations, a manager’s day is assumed to be full of meetings. This may sound okay but a sizeable majority of those people will also view those meetings as irrelevant, longwinded, not real work, avoidance of the real issue, etc. There are usually three considerations in deciding who needs to be there, and these can apply just as much to the regular routine departmental meeting as to the topical, single issue, project team. Most meetings do not really need the highly formalised structure of apologies, minutes, matters arising, followed by 15 unrelated items and concluding with ‘any other business’ and date of next meeting. The moral of the story is that once the main issues are on the table, the chair should look after the process and be the last to offer a personal opinion, unless there are clearly some non-negotiables that need to be stated upfront.
