Friday, February 03, 2012

Stand and Palaver

The latest trend in company meetings---standing:
The object is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play Angry Birds on their cellphones or tune out.
Shorter meetings don't cause the quality of the output to suffer:
a study back in 1998 that found that standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and the quality of decision-making was about the same.
Not only does productivity rise from spending less time in meetings, but standing up also confers health benefits.

Just think of the non-business activities that can benefit from the standing principle: 1) church services would be a lot shorter if worshippers had to stand throughout; 2) lines at the DMV, Post Office, and train station would move faster if the clerks were made to stand like the suffering customers; 3) professors will make their points more quickly and students will pay more attention if they had to stand for lectures.

The mind boggles at the possibilities.
© 2012 Stephen Yuen

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