DE204 Meeting before the Meeting | A Skype with English Bob & Jacked up Jimmy

The topic of this episode of the dHarmic Evolution podcast is meetings in corporate America. James shares his own experiences in meetings that seem to have no purpose except wasting time and money. Too often, James says that people abide by the “when in doubt, call a meeting” philosophy, but when you are paying people to stop their normal work in order to attend a pointless meeting that could have been an email, the system is broken. James mentions Jeff Haden, a writer, and editor of Inc. Magazine, who has written on this topic.

Many industries thought leaders like Seth Godin don’t even take meetings anymore because they have found that it is more productive to handle the problem or project in a smaller and more direct setting. In addition to just having fewer meetings in general, James also thinks that people should not be allowed to “think out loud” during a meeting because they should have been fully prepared ahead of time. He also advocates for having meetings at odd times like 9:03 or 11:54 so we don’t neglect the lonely numbers that never get scheduled.
Finally, James plays a recorded Skype call between English Bob and Jacked Up Jimmy in which they discuss James’ European tour. English and Jacked Upstart the call by discussing an upcoming meeting with an unknown purpose and unknown attendees. They decide that they should schedule a meeting before that meeting, so they can determine what the meeting should be about, where it should take place, what they should eat, and who should be invited. After a few minutes of banter resembling Abbott and Costello, hopefully, listeners get the point that more thought should go into calling meetings.

"Meeting before the Meeting" Video
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Jeff Haden’s Inc. blog
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