I have clients who tell me they spend 6 or 7 hours per day in meetings. I believe them because earlier in my career I lived that life.

It’s an unhealthy and inefficient approach for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the need to work another 6 or 7 hours a day to get necessary work done. If so many people are complaining about meetings, why do we keep having so many?

I can think of at least five reasons:

• Meetings take the pressure off the person responsible for the decision.They can shift some responsibility to a group or point out the lack ofconsensus.
• Most people don’t know how to prepare for or run meetings in an efficient manner.
• Meetings provide a social outlet for attendees.
• We struggle to write and find it easier to have a meeting and talk rather than writeabout the issues.
• We think we have to because it’s always been done that way and we want to cover our butts by inviting everyone we can think of.

The next time you think of calling a meeting, see if a conversation in person or on the phone can resolve the issue. If not, then write a summary of what you think the meeting will accomplish. Send the written document to the main person or persons involved and ask for specific feedback and recommendations.

If you have a good understanding of the situation and can articulate your position and what you want or need from others, these two steps should reduce your number of meetings considerably.

If you still feel the need to have a meeting, take the time to prepare yourself and the attendees. Develop an agenda and send it in advance. Start the meeting on time and stick to the agenda. Recap the major issues, recommendations and solutions. State next steps and end the meeting when you said you would.

When you are invited to a meeting, respond to the organizer prior to the meeting. Ask what is expected of you at the meeting and the overall goals and agenda. If you do not think you are an essential participant, explain why and offer the opinions you would have provided at the meeting. Let the meeting organizer know that you appreciate the invite but will not be attending.

Are you willing to take these steps to reduce your time spent at meetings?

If not, you probably shouldn’t complain about working all those extra hours to get the real work done.

My work with Sales people, sports teams and PR/Messaging professionals has a common, frustrating theme:

Listening skills are not a strength.

Sales people struggle to listen to coaching and mentoring. The average to below average sales reps also do not actively listen to clients and prospects. If they did, they certainly wouldn’t continue with the same approach. Instead, the sales reps would make it about them–the client or prospect.

The same seems to happen with athletes. The majority of athletes from youth sports to professionals probably aren’t great listeners. On the other hand, the peak performers listen well to coaches, teammates, and opponents then make adjustments accordingly.

When it comes to messaging, the average PR staffer appears to miss the mark when it comes to hearing or understanding what their target markets are saying and thinking. But the best PR/Messaging professionals listen to their clients and target audiences and craft messages accordingly.

Listening takes deliberate practice and an active rather than passive approach. It takes some work and skill but not so much that even the average person can’t do it. You don’t need to be blessed with amazing talent to become a good listener yet few people dedicate themselves to doing so.

It’s a shame because listening just a little bit will provide you with a competitive advantage.

Do you listen to the advice you or your company is paying for?
If you took the time to research and choose a vendor, consultant or firm to work with, why not implement a lot of what they recommend?

Have the confidence in yourself to know two things:

1. You made an educated decision in hiring the firm
2. Implementing someone else’s idea is a sign of strength and intelligence, not weakness and incompetence.

Otherwise, save your money and everyone’s time by not hiring an “expert.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings did something we don’t see often enough from top execs at large companies. Hastings admitted in a blog post yesterday that his recent decision to raise prices and separate DVD-by-mail and streaming services into different packages was mishandled.

“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation,” is how Hastings opened the post.

He went on to explain that he was concerned Netflix would not be as successful in online streaming as the company had historically been in the DVD rental business.“Most companies that are great at something—like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores—do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.”

Sounds a bit like the Marketing Myopia I mentioned in a recent post about Kodak. Netflix is in the entertainment business. The goal has to be to make their service as easy and convenient for their target audiences as possible. A good portion of Netflix subscribers want both DVD and streaming services. Others want a more robust offering in streaming options.

“In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success,” Hastings went on to say. “But now I see that given the huge changes we have been recently making, I should have personally given a full justification to our members of why we are separating DVD and streaming, and charging for both. It wouldn’t have changed the price increase, but it would have been the right thing to do.”

The price increase resulted in the cost of unlimited online streaming plus one DVD-by-mail to $16 per month from only $10. The New York Times reports that the increase has cost the company about 1 million of its 25 million customers and led Netflix stock price to fall by 15%.

The latest changes mean the DVD-by-mail service will be renamed Qwikster and will become part of a separate brand with its own management team.The price of the company’s services will not change.

“We’re done with that!” Mr. Hastings said.

The good news is Hastings took the transparent, open communication approach. He admitted he made a mistake and provided an explanation with his strategies to fix it.

On that front, his vision was right on.

I love the idea of Amazon creating a Netflix type service for digital books in which users pay an annual fee to access a library of content. Since I’m an Amazon Prime Member, I really love that the books would be available as part of Prime.

Apparently, book publishers aren’t quite feelin’ the love. Media reports note that when Amazon presented the idea to publishing execs, they were concerned about the possibility of lowering the value of books and hurting relationships with other retailers that sell their books.

I understand their reservations. The book industry has been hit hard by market forces and the traditional way of doing business is gone forever. Publishers are nervous about yet another possible threat.But subscription based services are both the present and future and could be an opportunity for book publishers.

Why?

We want what we want when and where we want it. Content delivered quickly and conveniently for a small subscription fee is the model for so many other things, why not books too?

What do you think about Amazon’s idea to offer a library of digital books through a subscription?

Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA made this comment in a Wall Street Journal story related to Yahoo and the company’s dismissal of Carol Bartz as CEO:

“People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. “Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”

Makes a lot of sense and highlights the dilemma. Creating good content takes time and money and in many instances isn’t a big money maker. The mantra “Content is King” is still accurate from a user perspective. If you build it, readership and interaction will come. But monetizing it is the real challenge achieved by only a tiny percentage of content developers and providers.

It’s about finding a way to get the right message to the right person at the right time for the right (or some!) price.