Meetings Quotes

“all the work’s done low on the food chain. Everyone else just has meetings.”
― Mick Herron, Dead Lions

“Stone's Rule #28
Never hold a meeting unless you know what result you want out of the meeting.

In both politics and business, the amount of labor and time wasted in meetings is huge.

It never ceases to shock me when I attend a meeting out to find out halfway into it that the organizers have no agenda and, by the end of it, have reached resolution on absolutely nothing.

A strong leader meticulously plans and methodically orchestrates meetings in order to achieve a desired result, or he doesn't hold them.”
― Roger Stone, Stone's Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style

“Always hated the sight of five, six grown men sitting around a table, doing nothing but work their jaw.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“... the perfect example of Robinson's law. This states that human idiocy multiplies in compound ratio to the number of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.”
― Aidan Chambers, Dance on My Grave

“If you are conducting a one-hour meeting at your company, you have effectively stolen one hour from every person in the room. If there are twenty people in the room, your presentation is now the equivalent of a twenty-hour investment.

It is therefore your responsibility to ensure that you do not waste the hour by reading from PowerPoint slides, providing information that could have been delivered via email, lecturing, pontificating, pandering, or otherwise boring your audience. You must entertain, engage, and inform. Every single time.”
― Matthew Dicks, Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling

“One little superstition of mine I hope you will indulge. I never meet with perfect strangers in desolate bastle houses or alarmingly named alleyways at twilight. This trifling quirk I developed shortly after acquiring a large number of enemies.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly Trap

“There is no way to justify a long meeting, more than 15 to 30 minutes, where no decisions are made. This kind of meeting should never happen; it is unnecessary.”
― Carlos Marui, MAPS: Boost productivity with Managerial Assertive Picks

“Doesn’t it bother you sometimes
what living is, what the day has turned into?
So many screens and meetings
and things to be late for.”
― Alex Dimitrov

“I said nothing. I liked to see how little I could contribute in these meetings. My all-time Personal Best was three words, nothing to add, of which I had been inordinately pleased at the time.”
― Kirsten McDougall, She's a Killer

“When you put yourself in the other person's shoes, you can see that the person critiquing you is merely trying to help.”
― Fran Hauser, The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate

“White-collar professionals also use prescription drugs such as Provigil, Ritalin, and Adderall to boost their intelligence and attentiveness.”
― Geoffrey Miller, Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior

“Birth is the beginning where all part.
Death is the beginning where they meet.”
― Laura (Riding) Jackson, The Close Chaplet

“The shadiest meetings sometimes take place with the brightest of views.”
― Nick Oliveri, The Conjurer

“A Chamber of Commerce President is a pure politician. He takes meetings and then takes credit for jobs he didn't create.”
― Jarod Kintz, Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast

“Once, several years ago, [GM] tried to stamp out bureaucracy--and ended up appointing a committee to oversee how many committee meetings should be held. (Quoting Sharon Terlep, The Wall Street Journal, "GM's Plodding Culture Vexes Its Impatient CEO," April 7, 2010)”
― Lisa Bodell, Kill the Company

“Other than we’re complete strangers,” I said softly.
“Everyone is, until they aren’t.”
― Beau Brown, A Husband for Christmas

“Let us meet each other with a smile, smile is the be of the soul.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“You need long meetings only when you don't trust your team, or are less experienced than your players and want to learn from them”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“But then the room became sullen, like a community member meeting for sheep that are hearing a ruling about to be declared and are asked to speak now or forever hold their fleece.”
― J.S. Mason, The Satyrist...And Other Scintillating Treats

“You need long meetings only when you don't trust your team, or are less experienced than your players and want to learn from them.”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“if we honor and value the complex ways in which people engage in organizational work, we are honoring the person and showing them kindness. At the end of the day, kindness in a meeting environment is about valuing the human before us: their time, their perspectives, and their personalities.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Leaders who sit in meetings all the time will never have enough time to implement their plans.”
― Gift Gugu Mona, The Effective Leadership Prototype for a Modern Day Leader

“at last the endless meeting ends

I begin to recite
the ever more infinite list
of things I do not know”
― Matthew Zapruder

“Some meetings are not by chance yet nor are they destined for nothing is written. God gave us free will.”
― Sivi le poète, Je pars… mais je reviendrai

“Watching an event through a digital screen is not the same experince as observing an event in person through the naked eye. Therefore, in person events should continue to exist despite the virtual modalities that came into existance after the start of the pandemic.”
― Saaiff Alam

“We are unconsciously distracted by seeing our reflection. You can alleviate a lot of the fatigue of teleconferencing all day if you turn off your self-view.”
― Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier

“Dacre's staff referred to his morning editorial meetings as the “Vagina Monologues,” because of his habit of calling everybody a “cunt.”
― Tina Brown, The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor - the Truth and the Turmoil

“Even when the elephant leaves the room, there is a massive amount of dung.”
― Wyatt Pringle Jr

“Meetings embody and reveal your team culture. They expose who has the power, who gets listened to, and who feels comfortable speaking up.”
― Minette Norman, The Boldly Inclusive Leader: Transform Your Workplace (and the World) by Valuing the Differences Within

“Every meeting is an opportunity for people to feel seen, heard, and respected.”
― Minette Norman, The Boldly Inclusive Leader: Transform Your Workplace (and the World) by Valuing the Differences Within