Canoeing your way to meeting effectiveness

My Q&A with Dick and Emily Axelrod in s+b:

Dick and Emily Axelrod’s Method for Holding Better Meetings

There’s an idea in Dick and Emily Axelrod’s new book, Let’s Stop Meeting Like This: Tools to Save Time and Get More Done (Berrett-Koehler, 2014), that’s sure to raise the eyebrows of managers around the world: Make meeting attendance voluntary—no strings, no reprisals. That’s right. Leave it totally up to the invitees to decide whether it’s worth their while to show up… or not.

The idea is borrowed from Eric Lindblad, a vice president at Boeing and general manager of its 747 program, who adopted voluntary meeting attendance as a feedback mechanism. He figured that if people didn’t show up for his meetings, the meetings needed to be either canceled or improved.

The Axelrods, a husband-and-wife team specializing in organizational development, wrote the book for executives whose meetings fell into the category of needing improvement. They believe that far too many of the estimated 11 million meetings held daily in the United States are mind-numbing, energy-sapping encounters during which participants are more likely to be motivated to hide from work than to get it done.

If you suspect that people might not show up to your meetings if they had a choice, read the interview here...