Mark Murphy

Imagine that you have a meeting scheduled for 60-minutes, but you only<br />
have 45 minutes worth of content. How long does that meeting last? Of<br />
course, it lasts the full 60 minutes. What if you only have 35 minutes<br />
worth of content? The meeting still lasts 60 minutes. 25 minutes of<br />
content? Don’t worry, you’ll still be there for 60 minutes.<br />
<br />
[What if you actually had 60 minutes worth of content? In that case,<br />
your meeting would probably take 90 minutes!]<br />
<br />
For you scientist types, you learned in Physics class (thanks to Boyle<br />
and Bernoulli) that a gas will expand to fill the available space (for<br />
example, there’s not a little pocket of oxygen in the middle of your<br />
office right now; it’s expanded to fill your entire office). Well, in<br />
more ways than one, meetings are like gas; they will expand to fill<br />
whatever space you give them.<br />
<br />
Why do most meetings last 60 minutes, regardless of how much content<br />
there is? It’s because we usually don’t have any other way of knowing<br />
when the meeting is over. Our schedule said we have a 1 hour meeting, so<br />
it’ll be done when that hour is expired.<br />
<br />
We recently conducted a study (which we’ll be releasing to the media in<br />
a few weeks) that analyzed meetings. In one part, we asked people coming<br />
out of meetings whether the meeting they just attended had accomplished its<br />
original objective. Sadly, the most common response wasn’t “yes” and<br />
it wasn’t “no.” The most common response was “I have no idea.”<br />
<br />
The overwhelming majority of meeting attendees can’t tell you the real<br />
objective of a particular meeting. Sure, they sit through lots of<br />
meetings, some of which even have agendas, but they still can’t<br />
articulate the actual objective of the meeting.<br />
<br />
This causes 2 big problems. First, if you don’t know the real<br />
objective of the meeting, it’s pretty hard to assess whether the meeting<br />
was a success or failure. Second, if you can’t describe the objective,<br />
you don’t know when you’ve achieved that objective. And that means<br />
that you don’t know when you can tell all the participants “Hey gang,<br />
we just accomplished our objective, so let’s get the heck out of here.”<br />
<br />
I’ve always been amazed that so many meetings take exactly 60 minutes.<br />
Regardless of the company, industry, size, geography, type of meeting,<br />
etc., they all seem to take 60 minutes. It turns out that every meeting<br />
takes 60 minutes because we don’t have a way of measuring when we’ve<br />
accomplished our objective. Instead of clear objectives, all we’ve got<br />
is a calendar entry that says this is a 60-minute meeting.<br />
<br />
How do you fix this (and<br />
[http://www.leadershipiq.com/index.php/upcoming-events/wasted-time] cut the<br />
wasted time out of your meetings)? Very simply, you write a Statement of<br />
Achievement for every single meeting (including conference calls, etc.). A<br />
Statement of Achievement is 1 sentence that says “As a result of this<br />
meeting, we will have achieved [insert something here].”<br />
<br />
It’s not complicated, it’s just a statement that tells you what this<br />
meeting needs to achieve before we can adjourn and go back to whatever we<br />
should be doing. And if you can’t identify a hyper-specific achievement<br />
that defines the meeting, you should cancel that meeting.<br />
<br />
It doesn’t matter what your Statement of Achievement says, as long as<br />
everyone in the meeting will know exactly when you’ve achieved it. Time<br />
is not a good metric for assessing the success of a meeting. But agreeing<br />
on a price for the proposal, picking a color for the new product, settling<br />
on a new location, or completing 10 employee reviews, are all viable<br />
Statements of Achievement. And they’ll tell you exactly when you’ve<br />
achieved success (so you can leave the meeting and go accomplish some other<br />
work).<br />
<br />
Here’s a startling revelation. Every one of our clients that<br />
implements this simple technique saves, on average, 15 minutes from every<br />
meeting. (How much time could YOU save every single day if you could<br />
shorten every 1-hour meeting by 15 minutes?) It turns out that most 60<br />
minute meetings do NOT have 60 minutes worth of content. And even when<br />
they do, if you tell people that the meeting ends as soon as they achieve<br />
their objective, they cut out all the nonsense and chit-chat and focus like<br />
a laser on achieving that objective.<br />
<br />
Too many meetings are seen as a waste of time. But if you can eliminate<br />
the wasted time from your meetings, using the Statement of Achievement,<br />
everyone will be more productive and much happier.<br />
<br />
One final note: Next week, I’m conducting a teleconference called<br />
[http://www.leadershipiq.com/index.php/upcoming-events/wasted-time] “Cut<br />
the Wasted Time Out of Your Day.” I’ll be giving you dozens of<br />
hyper-practical tricks and tactics for eliminating wasted time and making<br />
you more productive (and less stressed). This meeting technique is just<br />
one the many cool techniques I’ll be covering. There’s limited<br />
seating, and it’s almost full, so you should really register quickly.<br />
<br />
Don't Miss This Live Teleconference!<br />
<br />
[http://www.leadershipiq.com/index.php/upcoming-events/wasted-time] Cut<br />
the Wasted Time Out of Your Day<br />
Only 9 spots left for this event on August 27th.<br />
<br />
This message was sent by: Leadership IQ, 1050 Connecticut Ave NW<br />
Suite 1000, Washington, DC 20036<br />