CEO's First Question Concerning Meetings

Meetings can be a great way to improve decision-making, gather ideas, and inspire our team.can also visibly model leadership and establish the tone of the workplace as we conduct meetings. Sadly, studies show that long, unproductive, or inappropriate meetings are a leading cause of wasted time, confusion, and poor execution.

Might your company’s typical meetings involve a bit too much socializing, donut eating, or digitally-induced ‘spacing out’? From a CEO/Owner’s perspective, poor meetings can usually be divided into two basic categories:

(1) Those that we shouldn’t attend in the first place and (2) those that are relevant but poorly conceived or conducted.

In each case, our positional authority can easily prompt others to mistakenly ‘upward delegate’ responsibility to us while suppressing their own well-reasoned judgment or sense of ownership on the topic at hand.

Let’s start with the first category, meetings we really don’t need to attend. Since many professionals spend up to 50% (or more) of their time in meetings of various kinds, and studies have generally estimated that 33-50% of meeting time is unnecessary. It's easy to imagine freeing-up 10% of our organization’s vital leadership capacity. The odds are that we can free up much more than this by adopting a few simple disciplinesThe primary reason we attend unnecessary meetings is our unwillingness or inability to release responsibility and control to qualified staff members. For rapidly growing companies – constantly in flux with new employees and revised job responsibilities – this can be particularly problematic. Sometimes, we simply haven’t yet developed trust in our untested staff when a key decision is at hand. More often, though, we cling to control and habitually second-guess others or give speeches about what we would do.

Although this is usually due to indulging our own comfortable habits, it tells others that we’re control freaks or believe our people to be incompetent or untrustworthy. Consider the unintended damage to our people, organization, and their futures!

It’s axiomatic that as companies grow, leaders must delegate more responsibility to others. Otherwise, our growth potential stops at the end of our personal reach and ability. We have to ‘let go’ to grow! Remember when Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, confronted him in Exodus 18, saying, “What you are doing is not good… you cannot handle it alone… teach them… select capable men”? Let’s apply this wisdom to meetings.

The first question we need to ask is “Must I really attend?” If not, simply communicate that you’ll no longer go. But first, make sure expectations and accountabilities are clear. If the answer is “yes” or “I’m not sure,” here’s a method to help you clarify:
■ Ask “Why do I have to be in this meeting?” Record your answer.
■ Ask “Why is that important?” Do this five times in series, recording the answer each time. You’ll obtain a clear answer 99% of the time use this “five why’s” method.
■ Determine to stop attending unnecessary meetings, eliminate or assign responsibility for these meetings to appropriate people, and arrange for feedback reports as needed. A relatively small amount here can pay huge dividends to your company.