Meetings, are they really the necessary devil?
Let me remind you when it all started. Long time ago, the only way to get information, collaborate and update others was to meet in person. One would walk to colleague's desk or make a trip half across the city or world. Face to face meeting was the only real option to exchange information, provide updates, ask questions and trouble shoot, etc. telephone was distant second. Then came computers and they got networked and email became an easy and fast method of communication. It brought a great deal of efficiency, ease and like Internet it took time and space away from all the interaction mentioned above. So anytime and almost anywhere one could initiate or engage in a conversation.
However, this wonderful tool brought a major yet serious problem. As the speed of communication got faster, the lack of visual cues, difference in skill-set and cultural background of writers, complexity of the topics and inability to express emotions created a huge problem in the corporate world. Email created confusion, exasperate people to the point that it impacted productivity and the very thing email was good for in the first place; efficiency got impacted negatively. The problem went under magnifying glasses when outsourcing and offshoring became norm that relied on creating solutions where problem definers sat thousands of miles away from solution builders. Now, stake went up and slightest misunderstanding meant thousands of dollars down the drain every time that it happened.
Naturally, some smart people figured out that the culprit was email and urged everybody to resort back to meetings as much as possible. Co-location became the next big thing, video conferencing and working from satellite offices got bigger and bigger.
Now, there are too many meetings! Participants are usually late and get rewarded by everybody waiting for them for a few minutes in every meeting, multitasking in meetings is a reality of life and most of the protocol around the meetings is poorly defined and executed. Any middle manager in knowledge economy related jobs spends more than 50% of her time in meetings that may or may not achieve anything tangible.
Let’s see, we have meetings for progress reports, status updates, inner team, inter teams, product, working sessions, trouble shooting, planning, team building, offsite one-on-one and celebrations among others. In one of my analysis, EA would save around $300,000 annually (see below for the calculation) if it mandated the meetings to finish on 25 or 55 of each hour (what you can do in 30 or 60 minutes can be done in 25 or 55 minutes) and instill the culture of starting on time and finishing on time. This dollar value does not include loss of morale, creating interruption in the workflow, forcing context switching and creating unnecessary follow-up as result of ineffectiveness of the meeting.
What is the fix? Well, with advent of technology three major pieces can eliminate most of these meetings. IM and IM rooms are great way to get fast answers and start new discussions with the required paper trail in case needed for future forensics. Confluence or any collaboration and information repository that allows sharing and processing information, collaboration of ideas and solution development as well as managing/organizing multitude of digital artifacts either directly or through link to storage like Box. Finally, email solution that can connect to the collaboration tool and allow people to seamlessly use their emails to participate in discussions and review process.
Execution is key differentiating factor and one that I firmly believe Paypal is yet to wrap its head around it. Managing meetings is a big step towards moving away from the industry norm and creating a unique culture that emphasizes on getting things done rather than talking about them.
I must admit there are many situations that meetings are by far the best option. I personally like to meet with people who I just started working with to establish personal relationship, put a face on a name and get to know my collaborator instead of a few lines of text on my computer screen!
Calculation
50 people * 4 meeting/day * 30 minutes (25% of accounted time) = 6,000 minutes/day
6,000 * 15% wastage = 450 minutes/day wastage
22 days/month * 6,000 minutes/day meetings = 132,000 minutes/month OR 2,200 hr/month
22 days/month * 450 minutes/day wastage = 9900 minutes/month OR 165 hr/month
2,200 hr/month in meetings * $150 hr/salary+other costs = $330,000 /month
165 hr/month in meetings wastage * $150 hr/salary+other costs = $24,750/ month