Nothing energizes office workers more than complaining about meetings. And it seems some of the world's greatest tech successes agree. Here's some of their advice.
Mark Zuckerberg: A decision or a discussion?
The Facebook CEO reportedly improved the effectiveness of meetings by asking managers to explain the point of a meeting: to make a decision or to have a discussion.
"If there's no point, then there are no decisions," Microsoft founder Bill Gates might agree. He is supposed to have said, "You have a meeting to make a decision, not to decide on the question."
Elon Musk: It is not rude to leave.
Elon Musk once sent out an email to staff in which he made some "recommendations".
"Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren't adding value," he went on. "It is not rude to leave; it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time."
Jeff Bezos: The "two--pizza rule".
The Amazon founder meets investors for just six hours a year, and tries to avoid early morning meetings.
Business Insider reports that Mr. Bezos also has a strict policy: Never have a meeting in which you couldn't feed the whole group with two pizzas. The businessman believes small groups are far more efficient than large ones, and the "two-pizza rule" helps him prevent large meetings.
Steve Jobs: No need for PowerPoint.
Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs shows the creative genius behind the iPhone making an attack on slideshow users. "People who know what they are talking about don't need PowerPoint," he said.
"Generally PowerPoint presentations are a great distraction(使人分心的事物), unless it's data or a graph," said Professor Andre Spicer. "Long slides mean no information being conveyed."
1. What did Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both stress?
A.How to have a meeting. | B.When to have a meeting. |
C.The purpose of having a meeting. | D.The importance of having a meeting. |
2. Why was the "two-pizza rule" put forward?
A.To offer better services for a meeting. | B.To reduce the cost of a meeting. |
C.To encourage short meetings. | D.To limit the size of a meeting. |
3. From the underlined part in the last paragraph, Andre Spicer's opinion on slides is
.
A.less is more | B.the more the merrier |
C.something is better than nothing | D.a picture is worth a thousand words |