If that person wants meetings to start on time, meetings will start on time. When establishing the informal rules of an organization, employees take their cues from the person in the corner office. Time is money, of course, and all that sitting around and trying to guess when the boss may arrive is a waste of a precious resource. Why do so many in positions of power fall into the bad habit of being late for meetings? Is it just that they’re so busy? Or is there a small thrill in keeping everyone waiting for them, a reminder that their time is somehow more valuable than everyone else’s? Nothing can drain the energy from a room quite like waiting for the person in charge to show up. It’s very important to me to focus people and to keep them focused, and not just get in the room and talk about who won the Knicks game last night.” “Give me an agenda or else I’m not going to sit there, because if I don’t know why we’re in the meeting, and you don’t know why we’re there, then there’s no reason for a meeting. “If I don’t have an agenda in front of me, I walk out,” said Annette Catino, chief executive of the QualCare Alliance Network. If leaders make sure there is an agenda before a meeting starts, everyone will fall in line quickly. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation, so the meeting can get back on track if the discussion wanders off course. The meeting’s agenda can be summarized on a handout, written on a whiteboard or discussed explicitly at the outset, but everyone should know why they’ve gathered and what they’re supposed to be accomplishing. It may seem like an obvious requirement, but a lot of meetings start with no clear sense of purpose. “Give me an agenda or else I’m not going to sit there, because if I don’t know why we’re in the meeting, then there’s no reason for a meeting.” - Annette Catino, chief executive of the QualCare Alliance Network.
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