New York SBDC Research Network

From CBS News MoneyWatch : What do people complain about most? Meetings. What do workers love about working from home? No meetings. Meetings are the bane of the working day, and yet it's hard to do anything without them. These days, recognizing that collaboration tends to be more creative than assembly-line thinking, getting people together is how we make things happen. But meetings are very expensive.

I'm not a fan of business meetings. My wife works for a company that seems to revel in them. Sometimes, entire days go by where she does nothing but shuttle from one conference room to another. I don't hide my dismay. I prefer meetings that focus on a single thing, and then be part of an engaged group of people who share their opinions and reach some kind of consensus. It's a rare thing, but it is possible. (For instance, it's how we developed our presentation for this past year's staff training event.) I don't call many staff meetings (I like to think I communicate directly). However, I recognize that this is just the opposite extreme from how my wife's company works. There ought to be a middle ground. This is why I found this article so interesting. It ran in last Sunday's New York Times , and contains eminently practical suggestions for making meetings more efficient, and more useful to the time of everyone involved. I'm going to print it out, an...