Meetings, Meetings, Meetings

How to make meetings more productive

“Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

                                    John Kenneth Galbraith

It’s been estimated that in the UK 9 million work hours are lost to unproductive meetings each year, with 41% of UK employees considering unnecessary meetings the biggest time-wasting activity at work.  Almost half of those attending meetings believed they weren’t productive!!

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Need to brainstorm some ideas? – have a meeting

Want some feedback? – have a meeting

Time for a project update? – have a meeting

Routine catch-up to discuss budgets? – have a meeting           

No, No, No and again NO!

Time is far too precious to waste sat in a meeting thinking ‘this could have been done in an email!’

And what about all the time taken to prepare? Co-ordinating diaries, agendas and reports written, and venues have to be booked.

Well, all meetings will fall into one of two categories, those you arrange, and those you don’t.  Let’s look at both and see what can be done to stop wasting so much time.

Firstly, those meetings you arrange.

Review any regular meetings you have – other than one to ones with anyone directly reporting to you, or your line manager, ask yourself the following questions -

            Is the purpose still relevant?

            Is the frequency right?

            Are only the necessary attendees coming along?

            Are progress, notes, actions (with deadlines) and those responsible recorded?

            Is progress actually made meeting on meeting, or do things constantly slip?

            What value does the meeting bring to you?

Depending on the answers you can take appropriate action to make these meetings (if you keep them) more focused and productive.

How about setting up a new meeting?

1 - Challenge yourself each time you think ‘we need a meeting about this’, do you? Really?

Why wouldn’t a well-structured email do?  Even a discussion can be held by email, just include the relevant parties, give clear instructions and timeframes for responses.  You can decide if it’s a ‘reply all’ type discussion, or if you just want to gather ideas those involved can reply just to you – again make it clear in the email.

What about the good old telephone, give people a call and ask your questions.

Other alternatives are group messaging services, like Slack, where people can collaborate without having to get together in a room.

2 – If you decide you really do need to gather people in a room the next step is to determine who the essential attendees are – and why.  Only invite those who are needed to contribute – anyone who just needs to know can be informed later.  Considering why people should be there will give more focus to what has to be achieved.

3 – Focus on the purpose of the meeting, provide any necessary background information before the meeting with plenty of time for attendees to consider it.  This way you should be able to ‘cut to the chase’ relatively quickly. Always have a very clear short agenda, try and avoid items like ‘updates’ these should be provided ahead of the meeting.  Concentrate on what decisions have to be made, what actions need addressing etc.

4 – Get strict!  How often do you turn up at a meeting and at least one person hasn’t familiarised themselves with the background information?  The meeting then has to go over that so ‘everyone’s up to speed’ before getting to the nitty gritty of why the meeting’s been called. Often the important stuff gets rushed at the end, or even worse doesn’t get done at all so another meeting is needed!  Don’t allow re-caps, people will quickly learn that they need to read the information that comes with the invite.

5 – Record actions, timeframes and those responsible at each meeting.  End the meeting with a summary of who has to do what and by when.  Send out an email re-iterating this, and then hold those responsible accountable at future meetings.  Life happens and there may be some genuine and uncontrollable circumstances that mean deadlines are occasionally missed, but that shouldn’t be the norm. However, this should be communicated as soon as it becomes apparent, the next meeting isn’t the time and place to find out things have slipped.  Like getting strict this is a good principle to establish in your meetings.  The earlier the issue is flagged the more time there is to try and do something about it.

6 – Consider how long you need, and then reduce it!  Just because most electronic diaries work in half hour slots it doesn’t mean you have to have a meeting of half an hour or an hour.  If you think half an hour should do it, make it 20 minutes.  If you think it could be an hour, make it 45 minutes, you get my drift.  By starting off the meeting saying ‘right we’ve got 20 minutes to decide on x’ it concentrates everyone’s attention.

What about those meetings others arrange?  Well, you can be almost as challenging with them.

1 – What value do you (will you) get out of it?  Apart from informing you of what’s going on – if you’re not going to get anything out of the meeting you shouldn’t be wasting your time.  Also, what value do you (will you) add by attending?  Are you expected to contribute or be allocated actions?  If not consider whether copies of agendas and minutes are sufficient to keep you in the loop?

2 – Are you the best person to attend? It could be that someone needs to represent your department, but perhaps that joy should be given to another member of your team?   Joking aside, attending meetings can be a good development opportunity.  I’ve also attended meetings in the past where several attendees were from the same department and at the same level. If there’s more than one person at your level/department going then you probably don’t need to go too.  Perhaps you could agree to ‘meeting share’ having a rota of who attends and then updating the others afterwards.

3 – Leave at the meeting finish time!  This might seem rude, but you’ve agreed to commit the time in the invite – nothing more.   If you do this consistently, and the meeting often goes on for a while after you’ve left then perhaps you aren’t needed at all?  If you are essential then you should find the meetings start to run to time.  Admittedly this one’s a bit harder, especially if the meeting involves senior staff and the organisation’s culture allows meetings to run on.

Most importantly, just because you’ve been invited to a meeting, don’t feel you have to attend.