Have any of you often found a number of pennies in your pocket and nothing to do or spend it on. I have as well. While a penny had a lot of use back in the 1960′s and previous, they do not have a as strong of a benefical monitary value today.

As I wrote in my Thanksgiving rant on Black Friday, Hourly Wage and the Decline of Thanksgiving, I am all for inreasing the margin between opportunity costs and huge waste on our time and productivity in life and work.

Now I know you may have seen this already. Dan Pink beat me to the punch when he posted his thoughts in December of 2011. But I dare to bring you it again, an interesting argument for removing the penny from our daily lives. Except not me… I could use all the pennies you can spare!

I wrote awhile back of the Importance of Meetings and how you don’t know what you’re missing if you don’t attend them. However, I have been a part of many meetings that have had absolutely no purpose. Some of the reasons these meetings have had no purpose to me:

• A meeting to prepare for meeting
• A series of meetings to prepare for other meetings
• No agenda
• Asked to attend yet do not know what your purpose is for being there
• Invited with the thought that you will be an attendee only to find out that you are somehow the focus of the meeting thus leaving you…
• attending a meeting completely unprepared.
•  etc.

What are some reasons you feel meetings have no value?

Have you ever felt like doing this?

With any change there are the naysayers and the hopeful that will cry for or against the change. However, no matter how painful a change may seem or uncertain the outlook…. change is inevitable. Get use to it and adjust! Unlike what some predict the world will not end… not until October 21st… “probably” but most likely or maybe 2012

While I often loathe meetings, I do realize and appreciate the importance. There are things that will not always be effectively accomplished over the phone, on a conference call, in a WebeEx, or with certain individuals not able to be present or involved.

The Value in having a “Meeting”

I think the real value of “the collective congregation of people in the effort of accomplishing business”, or simply defined as “a meeting”, is to make sure that those people don’t miss the opportunity to hear or speak on something critical.

The cartoon does illustrate the irony of the dinosaurs missing the boat. They missed out on continuing the existence of their  species! But it also reveals what the boat missed out on… the existence of their species!

Deliver Value, Bring Value, Share Value

So while you have meetings to disseminate information, do not disregard the more important value of allowing others to be involved to engage and share their own ideas of what will and won’t work!

Without the exchange of ideas we all have the potential for good ideas and works to become extinct!

I still get annoyed by some meetings