I am all for team collaboration and exchange of information.  This is why I am a huge fan of modern web project management and team collaboration platform.  They make the information visible in a very efficient way.

On the other hand, team meeting is not at all an efficient way to share information, and not the best way to make decision.  Team meetings can be required (but far less often than often thought), and the attendance should be limited.  There’s an opportunity cost with meetings.  Team members can be attending the meeting or performing tasks that are assigned to them.  Which one will better serve the mandate of the team?

I sometimes feel that we should create a cost of the meeting based on attendance, and make this number public.  That may force some meeting organizer to be more strategic with the attendance list, instead of trying to gain importance with inviting too many persons to a meeting.

Because…

Do We Really Need to Have 32 People at This Meeting?

by Laura Stack on Jan 23, 2013, 9:14 AM
Meetings may just be the bane of our workplace existence.
They seem to expand as time goes by; and when everyone has to have their say, they can drag on for hours, killing productive momentum.