Rogelberg's The Surprising Science of Meetings

I read The Surprising Science of Meetings (2019) by Steven Rogelberg, a highly decorated Professor of Organizational Science, Management, and Psychology here at UNC Charlotte. There are a lot of meetings in academia and plenty of them are not run well. But we are never trained how to do so well, which is a shame given how much time we spend in them.

The book uses the scholarly literature to provide better understanding of meeting dynamics and, more importantly, to give specific tips on how to improve them. Whoever leads the meeting is of course critical--that person needs to start with the idea that everyone's time is valuable and find the right meeting structure for the task at hand. They need to be positive and provide an agenda that makes sense for that meeting. They also need to make sure that the right people are attending and that it is not too full. Other people can be invited but notified of what happened later if they don't feel the need to come. There are all kinds of other insights (e.g. don't do phone meetings).

I actually immediately took one of his nuggets of advice by shortening meetings. In Google Calendar there is an option called "speedy meetings" that reduces the default one hour to 55 minutes, and 30 minutes to 25. That can reduce lateness (because you have a buffer between consecutive meetings) and push you to finish a bit quicker. He notes "Parkinson's law," whereby a meeting will expand to fill the time you allot to it.

Especially if you're an administrator in academia, it's worth checking out.