The 15 Minute Meeting

No way would people from different campuses show up to 15 minute meeting. And they certainly would not take it seriously if we ended the meeting on a hard 15 minute limit. They'd have spent more time traveling than meeting.

Sure we have nice brisk meetings with devs in the same job role who might not be on site, but someone from PR or a Vice President is going to think it's a joke.

In the case that it was a top down order from my VP everyone would just have pre-meeting meetings so when the VP sits in we could hit his 15 minute deadline.

Imposing timing on meetings is irrelevant at best and destructive at worst.

The real reason these Agile, Googlesque meeting techniques dictate a time is to force attendees to prioritize. You can't dick around in a 15 minute meeting. However, by artificially imposing a time limit you also curb productive discussion. Fact of the matter is, some decisions take longer than 15 minutes to come to.

Instead of focusing on the time a meeting takes, focus on what needs to get done and who needs to do it. Create concrete objectives, then give one person that responsibility: "John will assign work streams to all team members" vs "Do work planning". No ambiguity - success on an objective is binary.

Personally these are, fairly often, "smoke meetings". Obviously doesn't work when working with non-smokers, but for those occasions when you just need to spend 10-15 minutes like this with one or more people who happen to smoke (assuming you do too), it's a great way to have a productive meeting while also getting rid of what can be a waste of time (a normal smoking break).

i really back these types of meetings, though in my practice, i call them "POWER MEETINGS" (i always hear it in my head like it was said by the VO for Power Thirst, hence the caps). get to the point, get the idea(s) out, and then get to work.

more substance, less filler, and i find more gets done