Meetings and minutes
Meetings. Love 'em or hate 'em, we can't live without 'em. Right? But is there any reason why meetings can't be limited to, say, seven minutes. R.J. Cutler, who directed The September Issue, learned an important lesson about business from Anna Wintour, the subject of his film:
"I work in the film business, where schmoozing is an art form, lunch hour lasts from 12:30 until 3, and every meeting takes an hour whether there's an hour's worth of business or not. Not so at Vogue, where meetings are long if they go more than seven minutes and everyone knows to show up on time, prepared and ready to dive in. In Anna's world, meetings often start a few minutes before they're scheduled. If you arrive five minutes late, chances are you'll have missed it entirely. Imagine the hours of time that are saved every day by not wasting so much of it in meetings."
