5 Simple Tips To Cut Your Meeting Times In Half

5 Simple Tips To Cut Your Meeting Times In Half

"I’m in (virtual) meetings all day most of the week, so I often have to do my homework in the morning or late after work and on weekends.”

Does this sound familiar?

70% of all meetings are a waste of time, 70%!

That is a lot of unproductive time that could have been better spent doing the actual work.

And the cost is not only timely. Bloomberg found that time in meetings has more than tripled since Feb 2020. Nearly a third of them are unnecessary - wasting $25M a year for every 1k people.

And yet, we still have meetings because they are the place where we all get together and sit down to get on the same page.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

As a leader, I’ve run many good ones (and bad ones) giving me time to test out different strategies I’ve read about.

Here are the 5 simple ones that actually DID cut my meeting times in half (will do the same for you):

?→ Ask yourself if you really need a meeting

Use meetings to:

  • Collaborate
  • Attack issues head-on
  • Solve urgent problems

But never have a meeting just to share information. A better solution for this is to write it somewhere centrally and just send out a link to that.

?→ Minimize recurring meetings

Organize recurring meetings if you must but do your best to avoid them.

Conduct them if you see week after week that you need to have one. But be sure to make a point to reevaluate the need for that recurring meeting on a recurring basis.

Add this to the end of your meeting agenda:

"How can we stop having this meeting?"

?→ Always have agenda and goals defined

If the meeting doesn’t have a clear purpose, then it’s probably not worth taking in the first place. Make sure everybody knows exactly why they are on the meeting, prior to the actual meeting.

When defining agenda, focus on outcomes, not time. Replace the “Review new design - 30 min” bullet with “Decide on the new design”.

Make sure everyone present contributes with clear agenda items and clear goals.

?→ End with an action plan

Make sure you reserve the last 5-10 min of any meeting to collaboratively decide on:

  • Action items to be done as a meeting follow up
  • Who is to own each of them
  • Deadlines,
  • Etc.

This encourages autonomy. When you’re the responsible individual, you aren’t dependent on a manager to tell you what to do.

End result?

Teams that are more self-reliant.

?→ Share updates in advance

An update should be a concise explanation of where something is at and what's changed.

So why do we waste an entire section of an agenda on them?

Instead, have everyone share their notes and read each other's. If something comes up for deeper discussion, only then schedule a meeting.


Final Words

By following these simple tips, you’ll drastically reduce the number of meetings and improve efficiency of the ones being held.

Give them a test run and see the ROI yourself.

If you found this article valuable:

  • Follow me for more articles on remote team processes, tips and hiring ? ? Milos E.
  • Check out how my team at DigitalSilk is creating superior branding, website and marketing experiences ? https://www.digitalsilk.com/

Aaron Corbin, CPA auditor

Financial Controller at ClearEstate | Financial Reporting & Internal Controls | FP&A | Tax | Process Optimization

1 年

This is great! I find it definitely does require certain skills and a lot of thoughtfulness to lead a remote team effectively. Looking forward to reading your newsletter!

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