Plagued by Meetings: Break the Chain

I have seen a dangerous trend impacting many people across a large number of organizations. It involves participation in back-to-back to meetings all day, every weekday. I have personally experienced this hell at different points in my career. I imagine it would feel like being one of the walking dead portrayed in the popular films of our time. Although we know this is not a healthy situation and that participating in a never ending series of meetings limits our personal productivity in most cases, the behavior is difficult to break for numerous reasons. People will justify why they believe they can't escape this pattern. If you are experiencing this dilemma, perhaps you would point to your company culture, leader expectations, or the nature of your job as factors that limit your ability to break free. I have been there.

The fundamental question that I asked myself over and over again, ultimately leading to personal action and freedom, was: Can I afford to NOT break this chain?

I need quiet time to step back and look at things holistically. This empowers me to understand the macro view and see how things connect or could be connected. I need working sessions on my own or with others to drill into specific areas to innovate and make the necessary connections where they are lacking. Securing this time is essential. Therefore I must establish the necessary boundaries and guidelines to ensure I am positioning myself to be as impactful as possible while leveraging my unique talents and collaborating with others.

Once I recognized the need to make a change, I found the space to begin solving the problem with the intention of creating a realistic strategy and execution plan. I quickly realized that not every meeting was draining me. I was able to easily identify the types of meetings that were nonproductive by simply examining how they made me feel. “Inform” meetings and meetings setup to sell me on something or to secure my alignment were the major culprits. The meetings that gave me strength were those that involved personal catch-ups and working sessions where collaborating with others translated into laser focused execution. Those sessions typically involved producing a meaningful output as part of the collaboration. Sorting meetings by whether they gave me strength or drained me was a critical first step. Not only did this improve my awareness, but it provided the necessary foundation to develop an execution plan.

The next step was to leverage meeting types to establish new guidelines for how I would organize my daily calendar and set appropriate expectations for myself and others. One day at a time is a popular phrase many leverage as a mantra when dealing with transformational change. I adopted this mantra as part of arranging my calendar. All meeting types would need to be evaluated based on a single day. If I was going to limit the time spent participating in various types of meetings, I would need to easily categorize them and establish daily limits for each meeting type.

I landed on the following calendar categories, hourly guidelines, and color coding:

• Alignment, Knowledge Transfer, Mandatory Meetings | Maximum: 1 hour/day | Red
• Personal Catch-up Meetings | Ideal: 1 hour/day | Green
• Working Sessions | Maximum: 4 hours/day | Blue
• Personal Innovation Time | Minimum: 2 hours/day | Yellow

Optimized Calendar

?I determined that I could be flexible on all daily guidelines except for one: I had to stay true to the maximum daily limit allocated to "Alignment, Knowledge Transfer, and Mandatory Meetings", which showed up as red in my calendar. If I already had an hour scheduled for this category on a specific day, I would need to move any proposed meeting of the same type to a different day. I simply informed people that I was limited on time. I would ask them to send me any available information on the discussion topic so I could familiarize myself with the situation. I would inquire as to whether there was a specific ask I could help them with in advance of any meetings. Having a one day at a time focus meant that any time made available in my calendar due to meeting cancellations or a lack of meeting demand would be allocated to personal innovation.

Communicating expectations and limitations required vulnerability and assertiveness. I proactively explained to meeting hosts that I was overloaded and needed to make changes to how I allocated my time. Given the shear amount of work in front of me, I noted that I had to ensure I could be efficient by reducing the unnecessary stress associated with attempting to do too much with too little time. Most people were accepting and empathized with me. I had to learn to gracefully say NO, which was not comfortable for me. For meetings with a large number of attendees, I let the host know that I cannot attend, and I asked for the presentation and meeting minutes. I also let them know they could reach out via chat with any action items that required my team's attention. For the vast majority of meetings I attended, I communicated that I expected us to utilize the bulk of the time working on what needs to be accomplished rather than wasting precious time getting up to speed. This meant leading with one statement and one question:

1. Please send me all the relevant information you have ahead of time, so I have adequate time to get up to speed on my own
2. What are we specifically looking to accomplish during the proposed working session?

I could go on and on about the various experiences and associated learnings that have made breaking the meeting chain possible, but I won't bore you with a novel. I will, however, leave you with some of my main #LearnShareGrow take aways from this work life transformation:

1. Breaking the meeting chain is possible
2. Change starts with awareness and the willingness to act
3. Vulnerability and transparency in communication goes a long way
4. Achieving desired outcomes is a journey and approaches adopted require optimization over time
5. New ways of operating are likely to be challenged initially, but with time and proven results, they too become the norm and are ultimately accepted
6. Time must be specifically carved out to make room for innovation
7. Individuals scheduling meetings have an objective in mind. As soon as we figure out what that objective is, we can determine if there is a more efficient way to assist others without unnecessarily sacrificing our most precious resource (time)
8. Setting up official time for personal catch-ups should not be required, and more often than not, these catch-ups turn into innovation jams or productive working sessions
9. Be courageous enough to do what feels right and makes sense for you
10. Not everything requires permission, as we are accountable to ourselves first and foremost

I hope you find value in this share. Working on this write-up has provided a great opportunity to reflect on my past experiences and learn from them. I would like to thank David M. Kornaros (PMP) , my friend and colleague, for peer reviewing this post to ensure that it is as clear to others as it is to me.

#LearnShareGrow