‘Doings’ instead of ‘Meetings’

Meeting table
Meeting table

I don’t know when my obsession with better meetings started. But it was re-ignited when I stumbled upon this conversation between Twitter co-founder Noah Glass and Phillip Torrone, the founder of hackaday, and former editor at MAKE Magazine, Popular Science, Engadget and 2600, in 2006 about doings instead of meetings.

Noah Glass to Phillip Torrone 
Ok. PT, I am soo looking forward to getting together. sorry for the
last min cancel.
tell.people.that.meetings.are.a.waste.of.time. …Hey how bout this:
Doings! from now on we are only going to have Doings. At Doings you
actually get stuff done. fuck meetings:-)

Phillip Torrone to noah
new rules, if there ain’t 5 blog posts, 30 minutes of audio or video,
or art after a meeting it is to be considered a waste of time, and
someone has gotta die.

Doings instead of meetings. Such a simple insight, yet so powerful. When the purpose of a gettogether is not merely to meet, but to really do, the context and output instantly change. That is why I started to design better meetings and have collected plenty of models and exercises around turning meeting into doing.

There are so many simple yet effective things you can do to make a meeting better – to turn meetings into doings. Starting with a customer story, not being late for meetings, renaming your meetings towards more doings (Coolblue’s ‘Gewoon Doen’ meeting), turning your regular PowerPoint presentation into a presentation gallery walk, etcetera, etcetera.

What do you do to turn merely ‘meet’ into ‘do’?

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