If Tired of Pointless Meetings... Then Read This!

Summary: All business organisations rely on meetings as an essential component of coordinating work and people, yet most of us would agree that many of these meetings are inefficient and ineffective and could be managed much better. Here I offer 20 guidelines on how to deal with pointless meetings that are disruptive, unnecessary rituals which hurt people’s engagement and the wider organisation’s performance.

“Meetings are a symptom of bad organisation. The fewer meetings the better” (Peter Drucker)

Well-managed work meetings are more than just coordinating people, actions and taking decisions. These are a good occasion to be acknowledged by colleagues. Good meetings provide an opportunity for people at work to get information and align thinking, socialise, enjoy other people’s company, and sometimes, in a good way, can also become an occasion to complain and express frustration.

Unfortunately, work meetings are not always well managed: they are too frequent, poorly timed, sometimes irrelevant, and badly run. These negatively affect people’s morale leading to losses in productivity, collaboration, and wellbeing for all individuals involved.

The root-cause for this? Simple, there are too many managers who don’t know how to occupy their time / justify their pay, they are unsure about their roles, so they respond by generating pointless meetings which are no good for people’s morale and motivation. Many of these ‘surplus’ managers spend more than half of their working hours in meetings that add little value to the organisation.

These individuals consider their meetings to be an important part of work: Wrong! Just because these meetings take place in an office with people doesn’t mean it should be considered proper work when in reality nothing gets done. Most of these meetings are spent talking about work, or even worse, talking about the next meeting, without adding any value whatsoever.

Under these circumstances, meetings become maligned and unnecessary. People attending these pointless ‘get-togethers’ lose patience because they know they will need to recover the lost time after work or during their weekends at the expense of their families and private lives. Managers scheduling these meetings need to be fully aware of the impact these are having on people (Read more: The ‘Golden Rule’ for Managing People).

Consequences of Bad Meetings

We all make fun about these managers and how painful their pointless work meetings are, but that pain has serious detrimental consequences for individuals, teams and organisations. Consider the following:

• These wasteful meetings leave employees with little or no time for their ‘real work’ throughout the day. These take away time that could be dedicated to critical tasks, such as developing new business opportunities and/or strengthening relationships with clients.
• Excessive number of meetings force people to make trade-offs concerning how and when to accomplish their solo-work. Sometimes tasks get dropped or are short-changed for quality. But more often people steal from their personal time to get that work done, leading to burnout and turnover.
• Too many meetings interrupt employees’ concentration flow. Unplanned or simply badly booked meetings disrupt employees’ line of thinking. Most employees anticipate these interruptions and, for their own sanity, simply don’t work on anything at all before the meeting. This pre-meeting dead time severely affects productivity and morale.
• Those employees who covertly do their own tasks during meeting time may seem like a harmless way to maintain individual productivity in the short term, some call it multitasking, but it is considered rude and causes group productivity and camaraderie to deteriorate over the long term. When people don’t contribute to the discussion or pay attention to what’s being said, the team fails to reap the full benefits of convening, and the meeting doesn’t make the best use of everyone’s time.
• When managers schedule a one-hour meeting, it doesn’t seem like a big deal, you think even if it isn’t completely productive, you’ve only lost one hour of time, right? This sort of rationale is wrong, meetings take time from all individuals attending. If there were eight participants in a useless hour-long meeting, the company has lost eight hours, one per each participant. Assuming that is a weekly meeting, the organisation is wasting over 400 hours every year (nearly 60 days!) simply by calling that one specific meeting. Now imagine how many similar meetings occur within your organisation on a daily basis – the potential amount of money and resources being wasted is enormous!

Note that employees tend to keep on showing up for meetings even though they rarely get anything out of them, all this simply because their attendance is expected by their managers. Direct reports under these insecure managers find this ‘meeting overkill’ situation frustrating and question why they must endure them, not only the meetings but also the existence of these obstructive managers (Read more: Essential People Management Skills).

“The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favour of holding meetings” (Thomas Sowell)

Is the real purpose of such meetings simply to justify the manager’s time at work? Or do these managers simply want to assert their authority over their team members? We really don’t need these managers at our workplaces! Businesses do waste money and resources by keeping these individuals who do nothing and on top of that inconvenience people who actually want to work. So, why is it that employees don't complain about this situation? Is it due to fear of speaking up? Concerns about their job security? Lack of trust in management? Remember, managers who have the trust of their team members are more effective at driving positive change in the organisation (Read more: Creating a culture of ‘Respect and Trust’).

How prevalent are such meetings?

Research shows that the number of workplace meetings have increased in length and frequency over the last years. In the UK alone, office workers are spending almost an entire working day every week attending and preparing for unnecessary meetings. The average office worker spends 10 hours 42 minutes every week, preparing for and attending 4.4 meetings, with 2.6 of those deemed unnecessary. With the average meeting revealed to have 6.8 attendees, this equates to considerable annual staff costs for unnecessary meetings. UK research also reveals that 70 per cent of office workers believe there are too many meetings in a working week, with 24 per cent saying that often the same results could be achieved with a few quick emails, 79 per cent of employees say they could get much more work done with fewer inefficient meetings, and 45 per cent believe that meetings prevent them from actually getting on with their job (Source: eShare).

Another survey of 2,000 employees in the UK, France and Germany claims that 56 per cent feel meetings are generally ‘unproductive’ and 66 per cent of those polled even admitted they make excuses in order to avoid meetings. One reason employees excuse themselves from meetings is due to the fact that these are viewed as ineffective (Source: The Independent).

“The longer the meeting, the less is accomplished” (Tim Cook)

In this respect, further investigation by Great Place to Work reveals that only 45% of UK employees feel management does a good job of coordinating people within the workplace. Taking into account people’s expertise and their available schedules to achieve business goals, employees do not feel management is organising and communicating effectively with the right people to complete the work that needs to get done (Read more: Signs your workplace is stuck in ‘Communication Limbo’).

Changing the ‘Meeting Culture’ at your organisation

The first thing you need to do is evaluate how the meeting overload is affecting your employees’ effectiveness and morale, use surveys, focus groups or individual interviews to gather data and impressions from employees. That will help you understand the full extent of the problem: the negative impact on employee engagement, how much resentment is bubbling under the surface and how much work isn’t getting done during the day. Key questions would focus on: How well are managers coordinating and communicating with people? How valuable are the ways in which you are spending your time? How efficiently are you working as a team? Are these practices sustainable? How can your employer improve this situation? (Read more: Dealing with Chronically Overworked Employees).

Real improvement will require systemic change, individuals can’t solve the pointless-meeting overload problem on their own because so many people are involved in the process of organising, scheduling and running these gatherings. It will take a collective coordinated effort to fix this engrained meeting culture.

“Meetings are at the heart of an effective organisation, and each meeting is an opportunity to clarify issues, set new directions, sharpen focus, create alignment, and move objectives forward” (Paul Axtell)

Consider the following guidelines / protocol to improve your internal meeting culture and thus run more effective meetings:

1. Clarify Purpose & Objectives: The root cause for the negativity towards certain meetings is because the real purpose of the meeting is misunderstood or even inexistent. Determine the type of meeting, is it a status update meeting? Information sharing meeting? Decision making meeting? Problem solving meeting? Innovation meeting? Or a team building meeting? Then ensure you have established clear goals for the meeting. Explain how these align with what the organisation is trying to achieve. Demonstrate to employees why the meeting is relevant. If there is clear consensus on the meeting’s purpose, then it will be much easier to focus on making a decision during the meeting.
2. Prioritise strategic and tactical meetings: Concentrate your efforts on vision and strategy communication meetings by the company’s leadership team, functional and cross-functional coordination meetings by heads of department, and project coordination meetings by team leaders. High-level meetings are held to discuss the direction for the company. Lower level meetings are used to delegate work and disseminate information. All other meetings in between just try to fill in the gaps, these shouldn’t require much preparation and should be reduced in number and kept more informal.
3. Review the frequency of regular meetings: Some regular internal meetings might seem entirely ‘pointless’ to invited parties. Are these meetings necessary? Do they need to happen every single week? Even when there is nothing to say since the last meeting? Is there demand for them? Start by evaluating the necessity for the meeting. Can you not simply distribute the meeting’s information via email or other means instead of having the actual meeting?
4. Establish ‘Meeting-Free’ days each week: Poor scheduling of meetings disrupts critical concentration work. Avoid damaging full workday schedules with badly timed meetings. Some managers chop up their team’s calendars so badly that no two / three-hour blocks are left for deep thinking work. This is the main reason people tend to come to work early, stay late, or use their weekends as quiet time to concentrate. This is not fair on employees. For this purpose, declare ‘Meeting-Free’ days. Suggest recurring ‘no meeting’ days. Allocate specific amounts of time each week for people to focus on independent work, whether in the office or at home. If possible, try to dedicate only one day per week for meetings e.g. concentrate all meetings on Wednesdays only.
5. Determine the meeting’s mode: Face to face, online video session, quick conference call, etc. Remember, not all meetings need to be face-to-face. Choose the best mode of meeting based on what needs to be achieved. Perhaps you can also record meetings for people who find it difficult to join – this is a good reason for organising online meetings / video calls.
6. Check the right people are attending: You need to confirm the attendance of key contributors and the decision-maker, otherwise not point having the meeting in the first place. For decision making, avoid organising meetings with more than eight people - limit attendees to people who need to provide input. After the meeting, share the decisions made in the meeting with those who will benefit from the information.
7. Ensure there are no unnecessary people: Recognise and respect your people’s time. Before you invite someone to a meeting, ask yourself, do you really need them there? Is there a more effective way to convey that information to them without wasting their ‘real work’ time? Sometimes meetings are scheduled with little regard for the time of people attending them. The scheduler, usually the boss, often throws people onto the roster even if there is only a small chance that the topic is relevant to them or that they’ll have something meaningful to contribute. They think more minds means more opportunities to solve the problem at hand – this is wrong and a quite damaging approach. Not only does it draw more employees away from work, it also muddles the focus, presents more opportunities for distraction, slowing overall progress.
8. Provide a clear agenda: The meeting time must be managed against a clear agenda. Make sure everyone is on the same page before the meeting. Most of the times the agenda is vague or redundant with side conversations that have already occurred, so the meetings feel like a rubber-stamping of decisions made elsewhere. So prepare an agenda with clear purpose and objectives for the meeting. Plan well in advance. Ensure you prepare the meeting agenda thoroughly and ahead of time. A clear agenda will prevent the meeting from being derailed by tangents or cross conversation.
9. Monitor timekeeping: Start on Time. End on Time. Keep meetings as brief as possible. Book rooms for shorter periods, as pointless meetings will expand to fill whatever time is given to them. If necessary, hold your meeting standing up or walking around the office. Determine a hard stop for meetings to keep sessions focused and mindful of attendees’ time. Bad meetings wander off topic, therefore the agenda must provide clear time control for all participants. Research reveals that most employees believe 40 minutes is the ‘optimum’ length for an effective meeting. People switch off during meetings that last longer than that. In long meetings it is not rare to witness people falling asleep or sending personal messages during the gathering. People tend to agree that mornings are generally better for meetings, with meetings between 9:30am and 11:30am as being the preferred time.
10. Manage the actual meeting: The ‘ideal’ meeting is one that stays on topic completely during the entire course of the session. For this purpose assign a meeting moderator (timekeeper). He will be in charge of keeping the meeting moving, the conversations limited, and the focus on the task at hand. The moderator or chairman should also manage any potential dysfunctional behaviours including wandering off topic, complaining, putting people down and criticising.
11. Give enough notice to participants: Last?minute meetings are sometimes necessary, but they should be an exception and not the rule. Ensure hours and locations are not changed at the last minute, so people don’t arrive unprepared or don’t come at all.
12. Allow people to prepare: For the meeting to be more effective and productive, allow people to prepare for it. Help people recall exactly what the previously agreed post-meeting actions were. Send out the agenda and objectives of the meeting, pre-reads and any potential pre-work with adequate notice. Proper preparation will allow for a more informed discussion. Don’t feel tempted to amend meeting materials at the last minute.
13. Keep meetings voluntary: Only if key participants can’t join, ensure they delegate someone to attend in their place. Having said this, do allow other people to decline meeting invitations if they wish to do so – no meeting should be compulsory. Never assume you must go to a meeting just because you were invited. Employees should only attend meetings when they feel these are important to them. This system of ‘offer and demand’ will let you know if your meetings are relevant for employees or not. It is a bad sign if nobody comes to your meetings, right?
14. Global multi-location meetings: Be sure the screen and the spoken content reinforce each other. This reinforcement is particularly helpful for those joining remotely. Try not to hold meetings outside of normal business hours unless it's an emergency. Manage virtual meetings with different time-zones fairly. Don’t allow the same group of people to take calls outside working hours all the time. Ensure all those individuals who must attend meetings outside working hours recover these as time off in lieu (TOIL).
15. Respect international colleagues: Organisations benefit from unique strengths, perspectives and ideas that are gained from collaboration across cultures and nationalities. Meetings are heavily biased with Western communication styles and meeting habits. Be inclusive of those with different work and communication styles: Speak at a rate that people can follow easily, especially those who are not native speakers of your language (e.g. use simple language; avoid acronyms; minimise slang, jargon, colloquialisms and idioms). Be very careful when using jokes, as people's sense of humour can be very different. Most jokes are very hard to understand for non-native speakers, these can be even offensive to them, and will distract them from your content. Remember if international colleagues cannot understand you, your meeting is a waste of time to them.
16. Take care of logistics: It is always a good idea to use visual stimulus such as videos and presentations. Confirm the projector or online screenshare are working properly. Ensure there are no issues with the venue’s Wi-Fi or video conference equipment, microphones, etc. - all people joining remotely should be able to follow the discussion, otherwise the meeting is pointless to them. Confirm there are enough chairs for all participants and the room is not double booked. It is important to note that employees are more likely to enjoy a meeting if it is held offsite and involves free food and drink.
17. Ban outside technology: Maximise the effectiveness of your meetings by not allowing outside technology at the meeting room, only a notebook, no laptops or mobile phones. It is disrespectful not to pay attention when someone is talking. Meetings will be more productive, and people will be more engaged.
18. End with an Action Plan: Before the end of your meeting allow time to discuss next steps. This should include allocating responsibilities and clear deadlines, otherwise, all the time spent on the meeting will be for nothing. As follow-up provide post-meeting minutes with clear action points and responsibilities. Ensure somebody is responsible for notetaking during the meeting. These follow-up notes need to be as clear and as actionable as possible.
19. Allow and encourage post-meeting feedback: Conduct your own meeting audit and cancel every meeting that doesn’t add value or has outlived its original purpose. Allow people to offer feedback on the meeting. Was it necessary? Perhaps provide a small feedback card or survey with a simple 0 to 10 scale asking them about the usefulness of the meeting e.g. How do you rate the value of this meeting? That is all, just a tick in a box, don’t ask them to write anything else, keep it fully anonymous to maximise honest feedback. This feedback will help you decide on your future meetings.
20. Reinforce meeting etiquette: Finally, and most importantly, respect the people who attend the meeting by showing some basic politeness. Never attend face-to-face meetings when sick! Unfortunately, some people do! Most people regard exposing colleagues to a common cold as extremely unprofessional. Another frustrating aspect about meetings are those individuals who talk too much or take the meeting off-track by changing the subject, or those who become aggressive and talk over each other, and finally, the most irritating are those who join the meeting unprepared, arrive late or leave early without notice.

If you follow the guidelines provided, there will be fewer meetings that you will be attending in the future, only the necessary ones. So make an effort for these fewer meetings, use your time wisely, give them your full attention and be fully present!

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself” (Henry Ford)

Remember, not all meetings are bad – good meetings are a conduit for change; these improve productivity, communication, and integration of the team’s work, not to mention job satisfaction and worklife balance. In fact, regularly scheduled meetings help align your organisation’s strategy with your people, and even reduce other unnecessary / repetitive meetings… you just need to manage them well (Read more: Now is the Time for Worklife Balance!).

Some Final Thoughts…

Although we all agree meetings are essential for collaboration and reaching business goals, we also need to realise that employees’ time should be valued even more than money because they can't generate any more of it.

I don’t want employees to sacrifice their personal time and wellbeing for pointless work-related meetings. Managers and employees should not assume all meetings are best for the business, they need to realise these represent a big cost to the organisation: lower levels of productivity, focus, and engagement. Every minute spent on pointless meetings also eats into time for solo work that is equally essential for creativity and efficiency.

Addressing work meeting inefficiencies could be the biggest single boost to productivity in your organisation. The additional ‘white space’ in everyone’s calendar will increase individual productivity and reduce the unwelcome spill-over into personal time.

By protecting employees’ calendars against unnecessary meetings, you are choosing real productivity over the appearance of work. Ensuring meetings are effective isn’t always simple, it is difficult to change a deep-rooted toxic meeting culture in many organisations. Therefore, a clear protocol on the matter can translate into more efficiency and productivity, more empowerment across your organisation, enhanced morale and motivation, and less tolerance for wasting time for the sake of it.

(Related Article: Descending into the realms of ‘Email Saturation Hell’)

Thanks for reading my blog. Were any of the insights provided of value to you? I would welcome your feedback - please do ‘Like’ or ‘Comment’ your experience on this subject in the space provided!

Thanks for your kind support - Follow me on LinkedIn for more articles and insights!

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of any other entity.