Guidelines for meetings at work

Here are some guidelines I've developed for handling meetings in the workplace.

• Never agree to attend a meeting that doesn't have a written agenda published before the meeting.
• Leave the meeting as soon as more than 30 seconds are spent on anything that isn't on the agenda.
• Never attend "status" meetings. Status meetings are basically your boss proclaiming that he/she is either too stupid to use email to get your status or too lazy to just ask you.
• Assigning blame is not a valid reason for a meeting. Neither is taking credit.
• If anyone in your organization is in meetings more than 10% of your time on average, they should be fired or reassigned.
• Recognize that almost all meetings represent a communication failure within your organization, because if you were communicating right, you wouldn't need to have a meeting. The most important agenda item for any such meeting should be "how do we make sure we don't have to ever have a meeting like this again?"
• People are social creatures. If you're having a meeting with a group of people who don't regularly meet, especially if it's a face-to-face meeting of people who are normally geographically disbursed, plan the schedule so that those who wish to socialize before or after the meeting can do so. That means don't do over lunch, and don't make it run so late that people are in a hurry to get home after.
• If there's a meeting that begins between 11:30 and 1 PM local time, there had fucking better be lunch. Otherwise, you're an asshole.