Business meetings: a waste of time?

We’ve all organised, attended or (even) participated in business meetings. Our work seems to be defined by countless meetings.  Work is effectively a series of meetings or so it seems. 

Some meetings are valuable; others extremely boring, whereas most meetings are only half worthwhile and, invariably, almost always too long. 

Business research shows that on average senior executives spend more than two days every week in meetings or that 15% of an organisation’s collective time is spent in meetings (Source: Mankins, Brahm & Caimi: 2014). I find this frightening bearing in mind that a lot of meetings involve the wrong people, take place for the wrong reason, take too long and/or fail to deliver conclusive results. In fact, the same business research claims that senior executives rated more than half of meetings as ‘ineffective’ or ‘very ineffective’. 

The problem with meetings is that companies don’t budget for them and there is no discipline. To my mind, time is a valuable company resource and it should be treated much like any other company resource. The popular mindset, however, seems to be that meetings equal work, therefore if I am in a meeting, I am working. 

I am willing to bet any company out there that if they were to budget for each manager a limited number of hours per month for meetings that the overall demand for meetings would drop, that meetings would become more focused, relevant to the attendees and more results driven. 

Don’t get me wrong: I am all for business meetings and they are essential to business management but I think people have gone too far and that everyone needs to reset their thinking as to why and when a meeting should be called. 

My advice, therefore, is to re-think the purpose of business meetings, so as to ensure that they become more value-adding to the company. I want the ROI of meetings to shoot-up and for people to treat meeting time as a very valuable company resource. 

Success should be measured by the results people deliver and not by the number of hours they work. If you were to cost the price of a meeting involving several top executives and/or managers you’ll know what I mean. 

My approach to business meeting is the following: 

First: All managerial meetings should be able to deal with the main issues and produce a decision or a recommended course of action within 60 minutes (ideally 45 mins). Meetings that take longer than 60 minutes (in some extraordinary cases 90 minutes) are inefficient and wasteful. Apparently, in 22% of meetings participants send on average three or more emails for every 30 minutes of meeting time, which to my mind is a clear indication that meetings are too long and/or not engaging enough. 

Second: All meetings need to be chaired and minuted. The Chair must ensure that discussion is structured, focused and with an objective in mind. People must come prepared to meetings i.e. circulate what needs circulating and read what needs reading before the meeting itself and if someone comes unprepared send him/her straight out; they wont do it again. 

Third: If someone raises an issue or identifies a problem the Chair should encourage that the same person come up with a possible solution. The ideal situation is that the decision maker is always confronted in a meeting with one problem and simultaneously presented with several possible solutions. My point is don’t let employees see meetings as a place to dump problems. 

Fourth: At the end of every meeting it should be clear what are the ‘to-dos’, who is going to take care of them and what’s the deadline(s). 

Fifth: Always try to discourage and avoid power point presentations (PPPs). I think it was Steve Jobs who said: ‘I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking’ and ‘People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint’. It’s not that PPPs are bad per se but it’s the way we tend to use them. I want participants of a meeting to engage, to think, to challenge assumptions and communicate well. I feel that PPPs get everyone in the wrong mode and destroys the very purpose of a meeting. If you have to use a PPP make sure it is not longer than 10-15 minutes and that it plays a minor supporting role i.e. it doesn’t end up consuming most of the meeting time. 

Time is a scarce resource at your company so treat it accordingly and make your meetings more focused, relevant and engaging. Meetings shouldn’t be seen as a waste of time.