Meetings come in different shapes and forms. Let’s chat about them.
Decisions
Most of the meetings come from the desire to have a decision made. The problem is in most cases is that these are not decisions to be made now. Software prototyping is cheap. We should just try to build a working solution and iterate around. Let’s prototype. Get someone most annoyed with the problem and leave them to build it. Of course, the clearer communication of what they are actually doing the better. It should be something like ‘hey I’m gonna build this – okay’ or even ‘hey, I’ve built that, let’s see how it behaves’ Does not need to be “we should now spend multiple meetings on discussing how this should be done’.
Sharing the knowledge
Other possible reasoning behind having a meeting can be that of some knowledge needs to be shared. And that’s a noble cause. Just don’t make a meeting out of it. Make a lecture. A presentation. No audience members interacting with each other. Speaker talking and maybe sometimes allowing questions. The knowledge sharing sessions are oftentimes a prelude to the decisionmaking meetings. See above.
Confirming your ideas
Sometimes however somebody just wants some confirmation on their idea, maybe before building a prototype. Then, there is a good chance that they already know who they should ask. No meeting then. Just ask the people you know you should ask. 1-on-1 interaction. Maybe somebody will overhear and start listening. Notice that the social dynamic is very different from the meeting then, two people having a conversation and another one politely listening, maybe being invited to the conversation after some while. Just look how it works in between the talks on conferences. Very different from “everybody says everything” meetings.
The meetings that are left
Also, if for some reason you really need to have a meeting – make it opt-in. Just the people who are interested coming. Set the timer. There is one I particularly like - a clock showing amount of money wasted so far by this meeting.
Post scriptum
37 signals on meetings: These folks have the idea of every communication should be async and read when convenient, hence their emphasis on email. That gets you to really think of your proposal and really describe it, which is good. To stop and think, RFC-style.