Actually, there CAN be too many meetings.....
Once upon a time, there was this company that had multiple meeting rooms. And the way they chose to control the usage of said rooms was through MS Outlook: they set the rooms up like any other entity (person) and one simply booked the room by "inviting" whichever room one wanted for a mandatory 'meeting' through a block of time on a particular date. This system really worked very well because 1) everyone could see who had what meeting room at what time. 2) the rooms could not be double- scheduled as Outlook would not allow it. So in short, the system worked great..... except for the people setting up the meetings. Alas, several of them would show up just before my meeting in a given room and show surprise as I had not been expected at their meeting. "Ah, but the meeting about to start here is my meeting" I would say. To which they would explain how important their meeting was (much more so than mine), how their meeting could not be rescheduled (implying of course that mine could- easily) and finally, insisting I vacate the room post haste! Now, I was always careful to put my coffee down at the start of this tantrum 'cause I always ended up laughing (hey, it WAS funny!).
I would then counter their arguments by inviting them to MY meeting because 1) they were already there (convenient, huh?). 2) My meeting were always a LOT more fun than anyone else's meetings. 3) My meetings were productive, at least somewhat. 4) My meetings had an end.
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Now here comes the funny part (you knew there had to be a funny part, right?). I called a meeting to discuss the mechanism by which one booked a meeting room and made it mandatory for the people in the 'troublesome' department. Some of them were not amused but I was, as was virtually everyone else looking on. :-)
Brian
IBM is the embodiment of you can't have too many meetings...