New Year's Un-resolutions The Business of Healthcare

No Meeting of the Minds

January 14, 2013

Is your medical group slowing down success, wasting time in management meetings?

Imagine a group that holds a meeting of its bloated board each week. Over a dozen people sit at the table, each putting in his three or four cents worth, even when he or she has so sense. Protecting fiefdoms. Feigning expertise. Micromanaging. (Micromanagement by an individual is bad enough, but micromanagement by committee is sheer hell.)

Sure, there are a few legitimate reasons for groups to have leadership meetings, whether face to face or electronically, such as when you need to pull together a number of ideas to plan a new initiative.

But the majority of meetings, those devoted to exchanging information, are a pure waste of time. Send a memo. Send an email.  Or even a note by carrier pigeon. But don’t waste time and meet.

Sure, business decisions require some thinking. But the question is who should be doing the thinking, and the answer is as few people as possible.

And, those people, those leaders of your group, must be empowered to make decisions – that is, empowered to lead. It doesn’t matter whether your leaders are elected or chosen as a result of the drawing the short stick. Heck, just throw a dart at a list of your group’s owners and anoint the holey one as the leader. Any of those is better than management by committee.



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