Eliminating EOS Meeting Madness

Learn more about EOS meeting madness symptoms and ways to remedy them.

EOS is a powerful system that’s helped many companies organize for success. As with any overarching system, you have to customize it to meet your needs rather than contorting your company to comply with the system.

EOS meeting madness is a triumph of rules over outcomes.?

Do your employees experience two or more of these symptoms?

Meeting Fatigue: Your employees report feeling drained and disengaged due to frequent and lengthy meetings, often without clear outcomes.

Reduced Productivity: Your employees complain they spend more time in meetings than executing priorities, which causes them to fall behind on their work or lose focus on essential tasks.

Redundant Discussions: Your employees note that meetings rehash the same issues without clear resolutions.

Low Engagement in Meetings: Your employees multi-task or disengage during meetings, indicating that meetings are not a good use of their time.

Long or Overloaded Level 10 Meetings: Your meetings stretch well over 90 minutes because they are consumed with granular issues.

Complaining about two or more issues means your company is experiencing EOS meeting madness. This madness stems from overreliance on structured meetings, inadequate meeting clarity, and too much time spent on topics that could be handled asynchronously.?

If not treated correctly, EOS meeting madness will undermine productivity and profitability while frustration and fatigue grow.

Ways to Remedy EOS Meeting Madness

Here are some ways to remedy EOS meeting madness.

1. Set a Clear Meeting Purpose and Agenda?

• Your meeting should have a clear purpose tied to a decision or coordination. Examples:This recurring meeting identifies and solves the company’s top three friction points.The purpose of this meeting is to decide our marketing strategy .This meeting coordinates the significant activities for [upcoming event, new product production, etc.]
• You should avoid information-sharing meetings, as they waste everyone’s time. Instead, use a dashboard or shared document to convey information.
• Your meeting should include an agenda focusing on essential issues and avoid allowing small, non-urgent topics to take up time.
• Include a read-ahead that participants get 24 hours in advance. If it’s not ready by then, devote the first five minutes of the meeting to having people consume the read-ahead so everyone operates from shared facts, and you avoid wasting time.
• Assign accountability: Identify who is responsible for each action item, the purpose of the action, and when it is due.

2. Shorten Meetings and Make Them Purpose-Driven

• Reduce your meetings to 45 or 50 minutes. The read-ahead format makes this easy, so people don’t drone-on with their information updates. You also gain a 10-15-minute buffer before your next activity to reset and refocus.
• Experiment with Shorter Meetings: Try 30-minute “pulse” meetings, which are feasible when you are clear on the meeting purpose and arm participants with the read-ahead.

3. Clarify Meeting Necessity and Frequency

• Reduce Meeting Frequency: Some issues don’t need weekly discussion. Determine which meetings can be held biweekly or monthly without losing impact.
• Use Asynchronous Updates: Share routine information using shared documents, dashboards, or short video updates, freeing up time in live meetings.

4. If a discussion about an agenda item goes overboard, put it in a parking lot and schedule a separate decision meeting to address it.

5. Use scorecard software that tracks metrics, reducing the need for extensive metric reviews in meetings.

Use these steps to reap the benefits of EOS without succumbing to “meeting madness.”?

According to a recent Harris poll, miscommunication causes the average company to lose eight hours per week per employee. Time spent in unproductive meetings adds to the toll. I encourage my clients to use an outside observer to identify cases of EOS meeting madness (your average EOS implementer can’t do this because they prioritize the system over your company) and help you take action to cure it.

If you feel your company is experiencing EOS meeting madness, schedule a call so we can discuss your situation. I’ll give you action steps to implement immediately so people can return to work.

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