Everyday you do a  job. That job serves some kind of purpose. A purpose for the business, for you or for others around you. However, so often people are so caught up in the job that they don’t think about the importance of talking with people!

When many writers, bloggers… people in general essentially spat the talk of it’s all about the business or you come to work to work not to deal with the personal’s of people, I just don’t buy it. Sure you need operations to run smoothly. However, I firmly believe that while you can understand your business, if you don’t understand the people… then you will never know your business!

The following is a short profile of a New York City curio collector whose home is regularly mistaken for a vintage shop. He invites people in, telling them nothing is for sale!

“This Is My Home”

This Is My Home from Mark on Vimeo.

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?

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

Has this happened to you? You put your time and effort into getting people and leaders what they need to be more effective and they don’t give the common courtesy to recognize it.

• Are your leaders lazy?
• Worst of all are you, as a leader, lazy? 

Management is preperation, time and effort. Leadership is putting good people in good situations for them to be more effective. Often, those who are in roles as managers and often looked to as leaders, are just giving in to pure laziness.

Don’t be lazy!