A camel is a horse designed by a committee. Camels are awesome but they’re a poor substitute for horses.
A horse designed by a committee solves too many problems.
A sarcastic suggestion:
Establish the Committee to Eliminate Committees (CTEC – pronounced See-Tech).
CTEC’s job is the evaluation and elimination of all but essential meetings and committees.
Guidelines for CTEC:
- Meet once a quarter.
- Review cost reports received for every meeting.
- Everyone who calls a meeting must send a cost report to CTEC.
- Cost reports shall include the combined salary cost for everyone in the room during the meeting, including travel time.
- Direct meeting costs like food, travel, and lodging shall be included.
- Estimated lost opportunity costs if everyone in the room had done something like creating, serving, or keeping customers shall be listed.
- Explain support staff costs the meeting incurs.
- CTEC shall publish the cost of all meetings on the company’s internal website along with the person’s name who called the meeting.
5 Questions to evaluate meetings:
- What was the stated purpose of your meeting/committee?
- What specific result was expected from your meeting?
- What result did you achieve?
- How often did you meet?
- Who actually did work as a result of the meeting? Eliminate everyone from meeting rosters who isn’t doing real work.
Committee or task force:
Eliminate the term committee from organizational language. Anyone who uses the term is required to buy lunch for his team.
Replace the term committee with task force.
Assemble a task force to solve specific problems or identify and seize specific opportunities.
Set a death date that determines the life of a task force. One month. Two months. No more than three months. Any group that meets longer than three months is fodder for the Committee to Eliminate Committees.
What committees/meetings are essential to organizational success?
How might leaders eliminate or abbreviate meetings?
