Are Your Meetings Major Time Sucks?

9 secrets to running strategic meetings

Are your meetings mostly a waste of time?  If so, you’re not alone.  We’ve all suffered through meetings that don’t start on time, have no clear agenda, become presentations instead of conversations and create information overload instead of decision making.  Even worse, people tap out emails and texts instead of paying attention to one another, and no real insights or learnings come out of the sessions.  

 

Indeed, according to recent Bain & Company research, senior executives rated more than fifty percent of the meetings they attended as “ineffective” or “very ineffective.”  Similarly, research from one company showed that their top 400 leaders found that the three primary things that wasted most of their time were:  unnecessary meetings, unimportant emails, and lengthy PowerPoint presentations. Ironically, we often find those three biggest time wasters in the same meeting.  And, ineffective meetings don’t just waste time – they waste money.  A regularly scheduled 90-minute teleconference of midlevel managers can cost more than $15 million a year in people’s time.  That’s a big investment.
 
In my new book, STRATEGYMAN VS, THE ANTI-STRATEGY SQUAD, I’ve created a villain that personifies ineffective meetings – the Meeting Menace.  This villain is known to neutralize neurotransmitter activity when groups of three or more people get together, causing a regression in collective productivity.  In other words, he dumbs down meetings and makes them unproductive. 
 
So, what’s the best way to neutralize the Meeting Menace?  Try using these guidelines and you will turn unproductive meetings into effective ones:
 
1. Invite the right people, not all people. By strategically selecting the right people to attend your meeting, you immediately win the respect of colleagues that are all suffering from meeting overkill. Carefully choosing who to invite will also create greater interest and engagement in your meetings because you’re only including those that will benefit from the interaction.
 
2. Disseminate information & data prior to the meeting. All information and data should be shared prior to meetings in written form, so people can come prepared for conversation, not needless presentation.
 
3. Identify the decisions to be made. Talking about the same topics month after month is a sure way to bore people into complete and utter disinterest. Identifying decisions to be made in the meeting ensures that attention is focused in a few areas, and then cut off from all others.
 
4. Have a clear topical agenda, allowing for flexibility. What’s the purpose of the meeting? Until that is made clear, it’s impossible for people to determine if they should attend or not. Establish the intent so it acts as a filter for people, time, and topics.
 
5. Start on time, even if not everyone is there. There’s no such thing as “fashionably late” in business. Start every meeting on time and you will begin to shape a culture of discipline and respect. This means not scheduling meetings so there’s no logistically possible way to get from one to the next on time.
 
6. Have a “Time is Money” jar—anyone checking phones, tablets, or laptops puts in $5. Research shows that people who multitask take 30 percent longer to complete each task, make twice as many errors, and offend others who are paying attention. So, if your goals are inefficiency, incompetence and ignorance, by all means, finish that text message. 
 
7. Respect the person, challenge the issues. People tend to fall into one of two meeting camps: polite groupthink or unabashed debate. Focus on the topic at hand—not the person, relinquish dug-in positions, and bring an open mind to each conversation.
 
8. Ask people their insights & takeaways at the conclusion and record them. How many meetings have you left with no new insights or learnings? If the answer is any, you’re wasting your time. Challenge the group to identify their insights at the end of each session, and you’ll build a culture of learning.
 
9. Identify next actions. Who, what, and when? Answering those three questions at the end of each meeting quickly establishes an action plan to move business topics forward.
 
Left unchecked, the Meeting Menace will drain the energy from your company through unproductive, inefficient, and morale-destroying meetings. Implement these steps and you can ensure that the Meeting Menace is adjourned.