Do Meetings Make us Dumber? Thoughts on calendars and the Tyranny of Outlook
Happy New Year! This is the time of Resolutions and new goals for the year ahead. Lose some weight. Exercise more. Spend more time with family. Take up a new hobby. Only the truly dedicated make it past the Super Bowl in keeping their commitments. One of my constant resolutions is to have fewer meetings. Not that all meetings are bad – many move things forward in a way that email just can’t do. Yet we have all experienced what I call the “Tyranny of Outlook.” I have mentioned this topic in this blog and elsewhere in the past. It isn’t that Outlook is inherently a bad tool. Outlook doesn’t schedule meetings, people schedule meetings. In January 2007, I had a unique experience in my professional career. I was a senior executive leading the technology and product development teams for The Members Group and our executive team agreed we needed to move quickly on our strategy for the agent-issuing credit card market (for those not in our business this is where one financial