The Essential Question for Productive Meetings

I’ve been in too many meetings of late where very little was accomplished. We talked and talked and talked, but almost nothing got done. Discussion meetings are fine and sometimes quite important, but none of these meetings were billed as “discussion only.” I came assuming we had work to get done. The strange, and rather disheartening, thing about it has been that few of the others in attendance seemed to mind. Don’t get me wrong – they didn’t enjoy the meeting; rather, it’s as if they’ve just gotten used to holding meetings for the sake of meeting and no longer expect to get much done. Over time, I suspect, this only...