According to David Grady at TED, bad meetings are stealing your time and nothing at all gets accomplished. Too many people on a conference call can muddle the purpose. We end up all asking the same question, “Why is this meeting even happening?”
Grady, a vice president of information security at State Street, outlines the steps in accepting a meeting and why we do it. He calls this MAS: Mindless Accept Syndrome, “An involuntary reflex in which a person accepts a meeting invitation without thinking why.”
Many workers mindlessly accept meeting invites without finding out what it is about and the importance to them individually. We accept without knowing the end goal. Workers aren’t considering one of the most important factors when accepting meetings: is my time going to be used efficiently?
Grady says that workers have a “fundamental belief that they are powerless through meetings and they have to live through them.”
“Enough Already”
Actually, we do have the power to change the meetings.
Before accepting meeting invites, insist that the coordinator explains the goal — and how you can personally help achieve that goal. They might just change their behavior when sending out meeting invites because you decided to change yours. In fact, the next time you get a meeting invite, you might even have an agenda attached.