Meetings - a time saver?

I have been reading "Death by Meeting" by Patrick Lencioni. 3 key learnings came of out this book for me.

1. Enterprises are social organisations. (I know... this seems obvious..but..)
2. Purposefully plan different types of meetings, which are run differently
3. Well run meetings are actually a time saver!

1. Enterprises are social organisations. In management, we get things done through people. This means, people need to communicate with people! What better way than to have everybody in the same room/meeting. Meetings are / should be - how we get things done! So, it really behoves all of us to make them as useful as possible! So, seeing meetings as the heart of getting things done, could change your approach to meetings.

2. Depending on the purpose of the meeting, it should have a different format and be run differently and all of this should be part of the company culture. I always knew there should be different types of meetings, but I ran them all in more or less the same way: Strict agenda, timed discussion, end on time, as little conflict as possible (ie. steam roller people into agreeing with me). So, here the key learning for me is two fold: (a) generate conflict in meetings to get thoughts out on the table and (b) run different types of meeting differently (the agenda is not king!).

3. Meetings are a time saver: Think about how much time you spend after a meeting following up on things that happened or were discussed/not discussed but should have been in the meeitng, to get alignment, clarity, action. If we could organise the meetings better, all that time spent following up, resolving differences - could be saved!

Interesting approach -challenging us to change our attitude to meetings!

Would love to hear your thoughts on this!