No more angling for the best seat; more meetings are stand- up jobs

Appearing on the Wall Street Journal, is an article on how the fast moving tech culture is evolving. From a human resource management point of view, the evolving tech culture is a growing external environment phenomenon that should be embraced and fostered by human resources managers as it has a direct impact on productivity. In this article the writer highlights several companies which conduct their meetings without chairs or conference tables - 'stand-up' only meeting, where sitting has become synonymous with sloth. "The objective is to eliminate long-winded confabs where participants pontificate, play angry birds on their cellphones or tune out.". According to Allen Bluedorn, a business Professor at the University Missouri, a number of companies have adopted stand-up meetings over the years. Mr. Bluedorn did a study back in 1998 that found standing meetings were about a third shorter than sitting meetings and quality of decision making about the same. In my own opinion, in this tough competitive economic environment, where a small edge, can result in big gains, any phenomenon which increases productivity and gives a company an edge over their competitors should be fully embraced and fostered by human resource managers. Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204652904577193460472598378.html?KEYWORDS=Stand-up+only