Welcome to the March newsletter on April 1st!  Today, lots of people will be playing practical jokes and some of them will be funny. So how's this for funny....I love meetings!  Yes, indeed I do, WHEN they produce something, anything useful. And when they don't, I stop going. Seriously, I gave up useless meetings just like I gave up greasy food, cold turkey, so to speak!

Dave Barry said, "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings'."

Well, lousy meetings anyway.  Indeed, there are great meetings and important ones I'd never want to miss. People need to congregate and exchanges things.  We need to network, learn, collaborate, decide, discuss, chew on ideas, mind-meld, team-build, brainstorm and have fun together. There are plenty of fabulous reasons why people should have meetings, gatherings, and get togethers.

Yet...we have a serious meeting epidemic in this country. Adding the good ones and bad ones together equals a lot of meetings. This is not my opinion, it's a fact. Smart people study this stuff, and the reality is, we have been meeting for more hours each and every year since they started keeping track back in the 1950's. It's a bit like global warming - it creeps up on you and before you know it, your life is one big meeting desert or tsunami or both, at the same time, in the same meeting.

Actually, the meeting-itis epidemic it's something that's continued to grow and spread such that now there is a whole planet full of meeting attendees suffering from bad meetings. You'd think it was contagious.  Maybe it is. The way meetings happen in your organization IS a result of your internal cultural norms and choices. These come directly from the skill or lack of skill of those leading and facilitating the meetings. We pass it on by demonstrating every day "how we do things here." Therefore, every new person coming into the system is subject to and generally conforms to the same meeting norms as everyone around them. I call it, the "cultural atmosphere we breathe."  You bet it's contagious. So, my friends, what meeting virus are you passing around your organization, starting with your team? Is it healthy and productive or unhealthy and unproductive?

Email didn't fix it. In fact, email overuse and abuse can contribute to bad meetings. Whiz-bang meeting software didn't fix it. Today, you can just throw on a t-shirt, sit at your computer, and be in a meeting with virtually anyone, anywhere, anytime. Yes, it's a short commute, and convenient, but now instead of commuting, you are simply in another meeting.  At least during your commute you could read a paper, listen to the news, play a book on CD, learn French with your smart phone, talk to your mother, lover, or sister hands free. But now, even if you are commuting, you're more likely to be on a call that's a...meeting!  How's that working for you?