The title question is not easy and we can be sure, if it is good decision, only when we arrange it, but I can share you my way of thinking in this case. What do I verify before add something to the calendar? Three things: goal, other possibilities and effectiveness.
Goal - a main reason to reject
When you think about a goal of your meetings how many of them sound like "Talking about...". I started from this level. Huge number of meetings I finished and I was happy (sometimes because a meeting was great, sometimes because a meeting is done), but after it I felt a void. Hours are used for talking. I hope you know where I am going, but no, I don't think talking is bad. However, my experience triggers me, when I hear "Talking" in a goal, because I can't think up goal with "Talking about" now. I prefer to talk over coffee.
So, what is a real goal, which we have never achieved? When I help others to discover it I ask a question What do you want to have after the meeting. If you want to have better relations in team talking is a good choice, but I think you want to have solution, share knowledge, decide something, analyse something, improve, decrease, document... and a lot of other words than talking.
Example of my goals:
- Prioritize tasks - after a meeting I want to have tasks, which are prioritized
- Decide, which from two solution is better for us - after a meeting I want to have chosen solution and description, why it is better
- Generate solutions, which resolve problem x - I want to have source of solutions for another meeting
- Find actions, which improve our performance - I want to have actions, which I can do and description why I want to do it
- Share knowledge about facilitation - I want to reduce bad meetings, increase effectiveness of meetings, have companions to create a better world
Summarizing, before you open a calendar you need to find proper goal. It is good to know, what exactly you want to have after this meeting.
Other possibilities, because meetings are expensive
What costs contain meeting? Facilitator/facilitation, people and their time, room, preparation, arranging... It is expensive. Everytime I look for alternatives. E-mail, coffee, lazy discussion, backlog ticket or something else. E-mail let people to answer, when they have time. Coffee and lazy discussion, let us reduce cost of preparation, arranging, facilitation and time (sometimes a topic is easy and we don't need official meeting).
Effectiveness, because we want to have the best solution
What is effectiveness? For me it is value for cost, so if your result is not good, it is not correct to decrease time for your meeting. Zero for any time is still zero, so you should focus to increase value for your result. When you reach high value of your meeting, it is just a moment to reduce costs, because now it will make significant improvement.
The first step is increasing the value of result of meeting (it can consumes more time). After it you can try to do it faster.
Step by step
- Always discover a real goal of potentially meeting
- Verify if easier way exists to achieve this goal
- Get the most value out of the meeting. The length of a meeting should be good enough to achieve the goal
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