Why we meet

- Many meetings are no longer called meetings. They're called briefings, innovation circles, or executive overviews. But most of these are just a standard conference meeting. And a standard conference meeting is just one of three types of meetings, the conference meeting, work group meetings, and brainstorming meetings. The conference meetings are typical office meetings. It's usually one person presenting slides on a single topic. This meeting will have five or more people with one presenter. Conference meetings are the default in most organizations. If you're in a meeting with more than five people, then chances are you're in a conference meeting. They're designed to get everyone on the same page or to let everyone know what's going on. Most conference meetings are an efficiency drain on organizations. Studies find that these meetings don't do a good job of communicating, but even as efficiency experts squeeze more and more out of organizations, the conference meeting lives on. It hasn't changed much in decades. Most businesses have conference meetings because they're tribal. They're a good opportunity to interact with coworkers. These meetings are a good way to build your networks, so a supervisor will point out an employee's hard work, and that's an important business practice. Conference meetings also cement your place in the organization. They'll give you a sense of where you fit in with everyone else. Finally, conference meetings are often the only way to meet people you wouldn't otherwise meet. Think about some of the people in your organization that you only see in meetings. You'll have to work at it if you want a meeting that's not a conference meeting. If you don't have a set agenda, then your meeting will always default to a conference meeting. If you want to have a more efficient meeting, then you should have a work group meeting. A work group meeting should have a maximum of five people. This seems to be the magic number to collaborate. The work group meeting is designed to solve a specific problem. A typical work group meeting has three to five people. The agenda might be something like, figuring out why the server keeps crashing. It also might be a discussion about why an employee is underperforming. The final type of meeting is the brainstorming meeting. A brainstorming meeting is the most difficult to organize of all these three types. This is a meeting with a maximum of seven people. That's enough to get a diversity of viewpoints but not so much that the meeting splits into separate groups. In a brainstorming meeting, everyone tries to come up with new ideas. Keep in mind that these are very difficult meetings to run. They usually do best with one facilitator who presents questions, and everyone tries to come up with creative answers. People should play off of each other's ideas. It's almost like meeting jazz. That's why true brainstorming meetings are very rare. If you're a meeting organizer, be sure to understand the differences between these meetings and which one you'd like to schedule. Also, be sure to name your meeting in a way that best communicates your agenda.