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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, April 28, 2003

Tops for wasted time: meetings

By Christine L. Romero
Arizona Republic

The boss blathers, the clock ticks and you sit there wondering when the meeting will end.

Runaway meetings are considered the top waste of time at work, according to OfficeTeam, a staffing service that also conducts workplace research. Unnecessary interruptions ranked second.

Problem meetings can stem from a lack of focus, nobody watching the clock and no leader to keep the meeting flowing and participants focused.

"A sign of a meeting gone awry is when people get up to leave at the end of the meeting, and there's no summary of the meeting or the next step," said Maureen Carrig of OfficeTeam.

An e-mail follow-up is one way to keep workers on track, detailing what is expected of everyone in the next week or two. An e-mail also can give a heads up to those who couldn't attend the meeting, she said.

Sometimes too many people are invited to a meeting because the organizer doesn't want to exclude anybody.

"Everyone, no matter what level of the company, is doing more with less," Carrig said. "Many people see meetings as a time-waster because they don't see the meetings as helping them get these things done."

Sometimes it could be OK to beg off a meeting or cut your participation short by explaining to the organizer that given your tight day there are only 15 or 20 minutes to spare.

One big problem can be that the supervisor or meeting leader is unaware she isn't doing her job. Carrig said it's OK for meeting participants to politely step in and try to keep the meeting flowing.

"A lot of times, somebody raises a question, but that question only relates to one or two people in the group," she said. "Don't have everybody sit there like a tennis match watching things go back and forth. Cut that off."