How much time do you spend in meetings?
How much useful work gets done in meetings?
Peter Edwards would always argue that is a meeting goes on for longer than twenty minutes, people don’t know what they are talking about – they are sharing opinion rather than knowledge.
To prove the point he would drop in to meetings that were going on, ask what the purpose was and ask what was known. If, as was often the case, he found there was little actually known, he would send the participants out into the system to get knowledge and then lead the re-convened meeting. He showed how good knowledge leads to better and faster decision making.
And he cut the time wasted in meetings.