The ubiquity of meetings and the madness behind it

For a long time, meetings have garnered themselves a bad rep for being irrelevant, superficial and a waste of time. The running gag of an employee rolling their eyes and sighing in exasperation at the news of a meeting, or an intern watching on rather dazedly and lost in a roomful of C-suites and high-level managers is an old but gold sight that we’re all too familiar with. In fact, meetings are often said to be so mentally exhausting for many, that even CEOs from top-ranking companies such as JP Morgan Chase & Co. and Zoom have called for the obsession to be put to a stop. And while the sight of an unamused executive in a meeting is hilarious to behold, many career experts including notable names such as Harvard Business Review have cautioned leaders against the hazards of excessive meetings, leading many to term it the Meeting Madness.

To all of our company brethren out there, we feel your pain. Gif courtesy of Tenor.

Forced to show up at a meeting that you have the slightest idea about? Been there, done that. Image courtesy of Meme Generator.

An obsession that needs to go

In a research study examining the adverse effects of meeting madness on organizations and employee performance, organization researcher Leslie A. Perlow and her colleagues found that organizations worldwide spend an average of 23 hours attending and sitting in on meetings weekly, a stark contrast to the 10-hour/week figure from the 1960s. In fact, Perlow and team’s findings are backed up by a group of researchers (Benett et al.), who found that at least 70% of Americans have spent a portion of their time attending video calls during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic during April 2020 are more tired than usual. In Bennett et al’s words,

“...evidence suggests that videoconferences are more fatiguing than in-person meetings because of increased sustained attention...”

Even now as many businesses have recalled their employees back to the office, many struggle to shake off meeting madness, which brings us to our most important question of the day - Why are meetings still frequently held if they are so detested and frowned upon?

The undisputed benefits to a old-fashioned meeting

Traditionally, meetings are still held for a number of good reasons. Namely, they:

● Allow leaders to address important company matters en masse

● Bring employees from various department together

● Provide opportunities for employees to participate in collaborative work

● Enable leaders and employees to keep each other abreast with important updates regarding ongoing projects

● Check in with employee wellbeing

● Give leaders the opportunity to collect opinions on a matter and make an informed decision that best reflects the majority’s sentiment

When conducted efficiently, meetings can significantly boost employee productivity and organizational revenue. Unfortunately, not all meetings are efficient and to the point. In a report titled 2019 State of Meeting Reports by meeting scheduling platform Doodle, the company found that unproductive meetings are the norm, and they cost businesses $541 billion in 2019. The findings were later supplemented by Forbes, who added that the figure does not include traveling expenses ($154 billion on average) borne by companies, bringing the total loss to a potential $695 billion.

In another finding, management consulting firm MAP found that an average of $37 billion is lost to unproductive meetings in the U.S. yearly. Clearly, there are more unproductive meetings out there than productive ones, and they are detrimental to an organization’s longevity.

How unproductive meetings cost businesses billions

Now that we have established how unproductive meetings can result in massive financial losses. Let’s take a look at how unproductive meetings affect and derail organizational productivity.

Multitasking

Unnecessary or unproductive meetings strip employees of personal time that is beneficial and helpful in getting work done. Perlow et al. calls this “deep work”, or an uninterrupted space/time where employees can truly focus on producing quality work and getting the job done on a satisfactory level. When employees are forced to participate in meaningless meetings, they are forced to multitask in lieu of deep work during these meetings, which affects work quality. In some other cases, this causes them to stay back at work or sacrifice their personal time during weekends to compensate for the loss of deep work.

Unnecessary participation

Many employees who have been roped into unproductive meetings often find that their participation is unneeded in most cases, and a majority of them are simply required to be present to show “face” to their manager.

Lack of agenda or structure

Both MAP and Perlow et al. believe that many meetings lack two important elements to them - An agenda or a structure. The lack of either element can result in an aimless meeting that drags on well beyond its intended time length.

Unproductive meeting behaviors

Unproductive meetings that lack structure or an agenda are further derailed by unproductive habits including digressing from the topic at hand, being interrupted by the occasional phone calls or text messages, indulging casual talks, complaining about ineffective employees and shifting the blame between parties, all which add to unnecessary time wasted.

Project updates

While meetings are a great way to update one another over important projects and work progress, calling for a meeting to provide updates over each others’ work that can be achieved in a similar capacity via emails or text messages similarly results in time and productivity loss.

Department-dedicated meetings

Some leaders or HoDs are fond of organizing their own department meetings following a large-scale meeting. The additional time spent on another meeting then translates to greater time and productivity loss.

Overcoming meeting madness and unproductive meetings

Unproductive meetings are detrimental to both the organization and its employees, however the good news is organizations can actively reduce the harm they bring to the company. Here’s how.

Identifying how time is wasted

To start off, Perlow et al. recommends categorizing unproductive meetings into 3 different groups which are:

1. Individual time-waster, or meetings that deprive employees of deep work

2. Group time-waster, or meetings that deprive department of deep work

3. Individual & Group time-waster, meetings that deprive both employees and department of deep work

Once leaders and management have identified how meetings can cause organizations to lose out on precious time, it’s time to move on to the next step - Data collection.

Data collection

Organization opinion on unproductive meetings can be collected through a combined use of company survey or interview that specifically aims at assessing employees’ feelings towards the meetings. Perlow et al’s study accomplished this through a series of questions from the survey including but not limited to:

● What are three words or phrases that come to mind when you think about meetings?

● Do you find yourself incrementally spending more time with each interview?

● Do you feel that you have sufficient time to attend to your own work?

● In your opinion, what were some of the attributes that set a good meeting apart from the bad?

● Can some of the patterns from a good meeting be replicated in a bad meeting?

The data collected from the survey can then be outsourced to a neutral facilitator for interpretation, allowing leaders and management to come up with relevant solutions that address the shortcomings in unproductive meetings.

Establish an agenda or structure prior to the meeting

Apart from taking on a methodical approach towards resolving unproductive meetings in an organization, MAP also recommends leaders and management to establish agendas and structure. Having a flow ensures meetings are always scheduled to run according to its flow.

Call out disruptive meeting behaviors

Setting agendas and structure are not the only way to ensure meetings always run in their intended manner, actively encouraging employees or leaders to call out on any disruptive meeting behaviors can also prevent meetings from turning unproductive or running past its course. For example, establishing a no-devices ground rule ensures that employees are able to provide their undivided attention during meetings. Or, starting meetings on time instead of waiting for latecomers to arrive can substantially reduce the time wasted for everyone.

Practice a meeting-free day every other week

These days, a handful of organizations worldwide are attempting to move away from the archaic practice of meeting madness and focusing on providing employees with personal time to focus on deep work instead. According to University of Reading Leadership Professor Ben Laker and his team who surveyed employees across 76 companies across 50 countries on the efficacy of meeting-free days and its effects on employees, the team found that organizations that practice meeting-free days weekly reported lower levels of stress and micromanagement.

Do a pulsecheck on team members regarding meetings

One last solution we have in curbing meeting madness is to have leaders and managers conduct a regular pulsecheck on team members following the conclusion of every meeting. Have a brief conversation with your team members on how effective the meetings were in addressing team or individual problems. Actively garner feedback from the team to understand if the meeting was necessary to them. Perlow believes that allowing employees to voice their opinions on meetings in a safe and transparent manner can help managers and leaders create more productive meeting sessions for their team.

Consider the madness and its purpose…

There’s a saying that aptly describes the trend of meeting madness, that is time is gold. Whether you are a leader or an employee, we can all learn to recognize the hazards of an unproductive meeting and recognize how they can potentially destroy an organization or its employees. If a meeting ends up derailing an employee’s productivity and thus their ability to get their job done, perhaps it might be a good idea to reconsider its purpose. After all, every second we lose is another second we can never regain.