How Meetings Kill Productivity
Ray Williams
9-Time Published Author / Retired Executive Coach / Helping Others Live Better Lives
How often have you sat through a meeting and said to yourself, what a waste of time, I could be doing something better! If your answer is yes, you are not alone.
Meetings take up an ever-increasing amount of employees', and particularly managers' time. My experience in working with executives and managers is that 40-50 percent of their time is taken up with meetings, that either they call, or have to attend. Which leaves precious little time left to actually get work done.
Some Reasons Why Business Meetings Kill Productivity
Constance Noonan Hadley and Eunice Eun, writing in Harvard Business Review, examined the issue of meetings. They ?surveyed?182?senior managers in a range of industries:?65%?said meetings keep them from completing their own work.?71%?said meetings are unproductive and inefficient.?64%?said meetings come at the expense of deep thinking.?62%?said meetings miss opportunities to bring the team closer together.
Other research has identified the following reasons why business meetings are unproductive:
1.???? Most business meetings produce no action plan. After a meeting, there should be an action plan that outlines and explains vital steps to be taken. Unfortunately, most meetings end without this kind of plan. This leads to holding subsequent meetings to revisit issues that should otherwise have been resolved. Of course, the more meetings employees and executives participate in, the more productive work time they lose.
2.???? Issues discussed at last meeting are reviewed. This is one of the most typical reasons business meetings take longer than normal. The issues raised or discussed at the previous meeting should have been disseminated and read beforehand. This will make one business meeting an apt sequel to the previous one—not a time-wasting repetition of the previous one. So, always kick that “Reading of minutes of the last meeting” nonsense out of your meeting agenda.
3.???? Business meetings sometimes break out into sub-meetings.
There are times when a business meeting will spark other new debates and discussions. While it’s quite normal for such new ideas or issues to come up during a meeting, allowing them to change the direction of the meeting is the common mistake that leads to prolonged meeting time and unproductive.
4.???? People socialize at business meetings. Business meetings kill productivity because they take longer than normal. And one reason they take longer is unnecessary socializing among attendees. People ask their colleagues what they did over the weekend, when such questions could be asked over lunch.
Research on Meetings
In a survey reported in?Industry Week,?2000 managers claimed that at least 30 percent of their time spent in meetings were a waste of time. According to a 3M Meeting Network survey of executives, 25-50 percent of the time people spend in meetings is wasted. And according to a survey by Office Team, a division of Robert Half International, 45 percent of senior executives surveyed said that their employees would be more productive if their firms banned meetings for a least one-day a week.
Lisa Belkin, writing in the?New York Times, describes a collaborative study by Microsoft, America Online, and Salary.com regarding the actual amount of time workers work in an average day and week. The study concluded that the average worker worked only three days per week, or about 1.5 hours per day. The study identified that the rest of the working time was spent with unproductive meetings heading the list.
According to a new Clarizen/Harris Interactive survey, only 40 per cent of employees think status update meetings waste valuable time, and 70 per cent say these meetings don’t help them get any work done. And 67 percent of those surveyed say they are spending up to four hours per week getting ready for their next status update meeting.
According to?Inc. ?and the online meeting company,?Fuze , here are some staggering meeting statistics to ponder:
?There are 11 million meetings in the US per day according to?Wall Street Journal ,?Forbes ,?CBS News ,?HRM America ,?CNBC ? Inc.com ,?MIT Sloan Management Review . A?meeting analysis ?by Romano and Nunamaker shows that, year over year, employees spend more and more of their workday attending meetings, with most of them being unproductive, and high-cost senior executives spend significantly even more of their time in meetings. Over the past 50 years, both the?length and frequency? of meetings has increased.
?In a study for?Harvard Business Review, a group of consultants from Bain & Company analyzed the calendars of key employees for one company and found that one weekly executive meeting?consumed 300,000 hours each year .?Here’s the specific breakdown:
?According to a ?Clarizen/Harris Interactive survey , 60% of employees think status update?meetings waste valuable time, and 70% say these meetings don’t help them get any work done. And 67% of those surveyed say they are spending up to four hours per week getting ready for?their next status update meeting. And according to a survey by?Office Team 45% of senior executives surveyed said that their employees would be more productive if their firms banned meetings for a least one-day a week.
?Brain Research
And brain research may provide us with another reason not to have meetings. Research by University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen Vohs and her colleagues, as well as other neuroscientists, indicates that we have a limited amount of cognitive or what they call "executive" resources. Once they get depleted, we make bad decisions or choices. Business meetings require people to commit, focus, and make decisions, with little or no attention paid to the depletion of the participants' finite cognitive resources, particularly if the meetings are long. So, if that is true, the three or four-hour project meetings may be counterproductive.
The Problems with Meetings and Solutions
?Problem: Too many distractions.?Ah, the siren song of your text or email chime. It’s almost impossible to ignore, but it guarantees you will miss out on what’s being said in the meeting, wasting your time and that of everyone else in the room. In fact, 92% of Fuze survey respondents confessed to multitasking during meetings, whether checking email or doing other work.?Solution: Control or Eliminate Distractions.The best way to stay focused on the meeting is to leave that distracting device behind. And if you’re the meeting organizer, it’s OK to ask attendees to leave their phones, laptops and tablets at their desk. Hand out some old-school notepads and encourage note taking by hand.?Also, the meeting organizer should make it clear to participants that they are not to bring other work to meeting
?Problem: The meetings are chaotic or even out of control. Solution:?The meeting leader or facilitator should receive training or coaching in how to run a meeting. If the senior leader doesn’t have that skill set it should be delegated to someone else. A set of rules of conduct and process should be established and enforced and should include:
?Problem: Too many attendees and unnecessary attendees.?Often, a blanket invitation to everyone in the department who might be involved is invited to attend the meeting. Sometimes, invitations are sent because the meeting organizer doesn’t want to hurt the feelings of someone who is not invited.?Solution: Limit the number of attendees. Less is more. Really. When there are too many people — or the wrong people — you’ll end up with off-target tangents and input that doesn’t solve your issues. Plus, they tend to tune out when people can’t get a word in edgewise. In fact, meetings are most effective when they include?just five people .?According to studies, a meeting of more than 20 is effectively useless.?Consider borrowing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’?T wo Pizza Rule :?Make the attendee list small enough that two pizzas adequately feeds the group. Not only does this keep meetings productive, but it also guards against?groupthink .?Another great rule of thumb is the? Rule of 7 , the ideal number for group tasks,?including meetings. For every person over that magic number, the likelihood of making an executable decision decreases by 10 percent. That means that decision effectiveness is just about zero once you hit 16 or 17 people in the room. So, figure out who needs to be there and only invite them. The others can be sent meeting notes if they want to know what’s happening.
?Problem: Meetings are too long. One of the biggest gripes from meeting attendees is that meetings are too long–sometimes several hours– which they complain actually detracts from their productivity and ability to do their own work.?Solution: Limit the meeting length to one hour, or less. And end the meeting on time, even if the agenda is not completed. Consider having walking meetings rather than sitting down. Walking meetings can be a benefit for participants’ health and may also reduced the time needed. A related problem is the agenda has been covered and decisions have been made, yet you still have 20 minutes allocated to the meeting and you decide to deal with new or other items. Should you introduce a new topic or revisit something you’ve already adequately covered? There’s an adage that describes why you feel like you have to use up the whole hour:?Work will expand to fit the time available,?otherwise known as? Parkinson’s Law .?But you can — and should —?break this law when the agenda items have been adequately covered.
?Problem: Meetings start late and end late.?A frequent complaint of meeting attendees is the late arrival of individual participants and/or meetings that exceed the allocated time limit. There’s nothing worse than attending a meeting and not getting through all the topics, only to have to schedule a follow-up meeting. It takes discipline to keep meetings focused and moving.?Solution: First, have a structured, detailed, advanced agenda with time limits for each item. Second, the meetings should be ended at the posted time, even if the agenda is not completed. And finally, don’t let people who are late to the meeting by more than 15 minutes join.
?Problem: Meeting agendas don’t exist or are vague.?They only have a title or a few bullet points, but the purpose is unclear, and no background material is provided. Solution: A good meeting should have a detailed description of the items to be covered, preferably in the form of questions or actions to be taken, and a time allocation for each item, which should be followed rigorously. It is also helpful to indicate who will speak to the item or introduce it.
?Problem: Meetings that don’t have follow-up.?Much is discussed at the meeting, but people leave not being clear as to what happens next. Solution:?An agenda should clearly indicate decisions have to be made. After making the decision, a clear record should be made, including specific follow up actions to be taken and whose responsibility they are. People should not leave the meeting without that understanding.
?Problem: Meetings are used for “social loafing.” When grouped together, individuals will often reduce their efforts in order to avoid doing more work than another team member. This might sound like a simple personality problem, but?s tudies repeatedly find ? that individuals learn that their efforts as part of a group will not have as significant an impact as if they had done the work separately.?Solution: Have a structured tight agenda that requires participants to prepare in advance and participate proactively. Connect work at the meeting with required work individually.
?Problem: Certain attendees monopolize the conversation/meeting. A surefire way to have everyone else tune out is by having the meeting organizer or facilitator talking too much, or by allowing others to take over the meeting, or pursue sidebar conversations.?Solution: Create an airtight agenda, which will set expectations for the meeting and allow attendees to prepare adequately. When people have time to gather their thoughts in advance, you’ll have a more productive conversation, so try to share the agenda a few days before your meeting. Effective agendas are much more than just a list of topics, so consider adding who will be talking about each topic (including if you want everyone prepared for a brainstorm) as well as how long is allocated for each topic, to help keep everyone on point.
?Problem. Meetings utilize brainstorming as an activity to enhance creativity, involvement and productivity. Yet, after more than 60 years of scientific research, there is scant evidence that brainstorming produces better or more ideas than the same number of individuals working alone would produce. A?meta-analytic review ?of more than 800 teams indicated that individuals are more likely to generate a higher number of original ideas when they don’t interact with others. Brainstorming is particularly likely to harm productivity in large teams when teams are closely supervised, and when performance is oral rather than written. Another problem is that teams tend to give up when they notice that their efforts aren’t producing very much. may be even more significant, is that brainstorming can actually hamper creativity.?A study entitled “Collaborative Fixation: Effects of Others’ Ideas on Brainstorming,” by researchers Nichols Kohn and Steven Smith at Texas A&M University, and published in?Applied Cognitive Psychology, ?shows that brainstorming may not be the best strategy to generate unique and varied ideas.?The researchers concluded that group brainstorming exercises can lead to fixation on only one idea or possibility, blocking out other ideas and possibilities, leading eventually to a conformity of ideas. Lead researcher Nicholas Kohn explains, “Fixation to other people’s ideas can occur unconsciously and lead to you suggesting ideas that mimic your brainstorming partners. Thus, you potentially become less creative.”?Solution.?Investigate alternatives to brainstorming. One example is called “brainwriting,” ?in which participants write their ideas down silently; after they have been captured, they are shared in the group; then the participants can build on each other’s ideas. Another approach is to have each participant write down one idea, then pass it to the person on the right or left in the group. That person’s task is to elaborate on the first idea, then pass it on to the next person. The process is repeated until every person in the group has elaborated on each person’s original idea. Then the ideas are shared in the group. Cognitive psychologist Tony McCaffrey?proposes ?another, cooperative alternative. McCaffrey suggests an approach called “brainswarming,” which encourages individual ideation within the context of a larger objective. Brainswarming begins by placing a goal or problem at the top of a whiteboard, then listing the resources available to meet these problems at the bottom. Members of your team sit independently and write down ideas for tackling the problem from either end. McCaffrey has found that natural “top-down” thinkers will begin refining the goal, while “bottom-up” thinkers will either add more resources or analyze how resources can be used to solve problems. The magic happens in the middle, where these two approaches connect.?Finally, an approach which is an alternative to brainstorming is just not to use it, but ask people individually to work on their own and suggest ideas. ?
?Summary:
Concerns about expanding work and productivity declines are legitimate, and evidence clearly exists that excessive and poorly managed meetings may be a contributing reason. Leaders of organizations would be wise to address this issue.
?
?
?
?
?