Ron Friedman

A lot of organizations just simply allow anyone to call a meeting for any purposes.

And unfortunately, many people use meetings as a crutch.

It prevents them from having to make a decision.

And it gives them license to procrastinate because, after all, they're waiting for other people's input.

So when you set meeting guidelines, what happens is all those opportunities for unnecessary meetings evaporate.

So within my team, we have a simple rule.

No decision, no meeting.

Unless there's a decision to be made, we're not going to pull people away from doing their work.

If you have a question, pick up the phone.

If you have an update, that's an email or a screen capture.

Another example of a meeting guideline in super teams is from the company Percolate in New York City.

They have a meeting guideline that says no spectators.

If you're not contributing to the meeting, you don't need to be there.

It's not a criticism.

It's respect for your time.

And so what happens is when you have these meeting guidelines, you can literally save people 10 hours a week.

And one thing I didn't mention, I think, until now is that most employees end up spending 18 hours a week in meetings and then another 11 hours a week.

on email.

That leaves about a day to do a week's worth of work.

That's the reality many of us live in.