Early resolution, the 22 min meeting

Have you ever heard of the 22 minutes meeting? It was first presented by Nicole Steinbok (@nicolesteinbok) at Ignite Seattle in 2010. The idea is dead simple:

If meetings are toxic per essence, they are made even worse by weak planning and wrong moderation. Done right, meetings can be effective and I dare say even productive.

Nicole suggested 8 points for killer meetings:

1. Who said meetings should last 15, 30 or 60 minutes? This allows for series of meetings with absolutely no time to go to the bathroom or travel from one part of the building to another AND making it on-time to the next one. 22 minutes-long meetings, scheduled in a 30 min timeslot allow for travel time and even post-processing.
2. The meeting has a goal and an agenda and...
3. ... the agenda is sent 3 days in advance. This ensures that the meeting is prepared by all the participants.
4. Thanks to point 1, the meeting starts on-time... this is usually necessary for a meeting to end on time... but not sufficient, your moderation skills will be required to achieve that!
5. Everybody stands up, 22 minutes are not long and this will energize the group
6. No laptops, if you have better things to do, just don't show up and...
7. ... keep your phone in your pants, it might be small, it is disruptive nonetheless
8. This format requires real moderation to handle tangents and off-topics discussions. So keep the focus on the original discussion and takes notes of the comments made.

Trying this will be one of my top new year's 2016 resolutions. I can't wait to start!

Cover image: Richard Rutter, CC BY 2.0