Holding meetings is a regular as well as very important activity in business in order to keep teams on track and to ideate. Meetings are organized to review progress, discuss problems, and come up with solutions and new ideas. Meetings can also help to create deeper connections within team and improve professional relationships. Thus, meetings are aimed at boosting productivity and efficiency so that even the most challenging tasks can be accomplished by facilitating everyone to be on the same page and aware of their role, responsibility and accountability.
Therefore, it is essential that meetings are managed effectively in an organized and systematic way so that everyone gains from them rather than their becoming just routine time suck.
Prevalent status about effectiveness of meetings
It has been repeatedly claimed that almost half of all attendees say that meetings are the number one time-waster at work. According to a recent study by Bain & Company, 15% of an organization's collective time is spent in meetings, and 50% of those meetings are deemed unnecessary. It is estimated that half of meeting time is spent on irrelevant topics and only 37% of organizations track the productivity and effectiveness of their meetings. A survey also claimed that a majority (71%) of even the senior managers believe meetings are unproductive and inefficient, while not more than 50% of employees feel that their ideas are heard during meetings. A survey by HBR, only 17% of executives believe their meetings are productive and valuable.
This means that organizations are wasting a significant amount of resources on many ineffective meetings that don't contribute to the intended purpose and the bottom line.
Negative Consequences of ineffective meetings
The wastage of time and resources in ineffective meetings has a number of negative consequences for the organizations. These include:
- Reduced productivity: Having spent too much time in meetings, employees are left with less time to do their actual work. This can lead to missed deadlines and reduced output.
- Increased stress and burnout: Attending so many meetings can make employees feel overwhelmed and stressed. This can lead decreased job satisfaction and even burnout leading to further loss of interest and productivity.
- Reduced employee engagement: A notion that their time is being wasted in meetings makes employees irritated, disillusioned and less likely to feel strong engagement in their work. This can lead to higher turnover rates and lower overall morale.
- Cost of wasted time: Besides its being a productivity issue, wasted time in meetings also has a financial impact on organizations. The obvious costs like salaries and sometimes travel expenses for employees who attend the meeting, are very less compared to the indirect costs such as lost productivity and delayed projects.
Possibility of such consequences underlines the need for organizations to take steps to enhance effectiveness and productivity of the meetings.
Reasons behind meeting inefficiencies
Many meetings are not a good use of corporate time. This may be because of reasons noted below:
- Unnecessary meetings: Many meetings are held simply to share information that could be shared more efficiently via email or other means.
- Poorly planned meetings: This is largely due to poor planning and lack of preparation. Many meetings lack clear goals, agendas, or decision-making processes. Meetings are held even when there is not any agenda at all or when the agenda either very flexible or not enforced. This leads to rambling discussions and wasted time.
- Meetings being too long: While studies have shown that the meeting productivity declines sharply after 30 minutes and optimal meeting length is around 20 minutes, most of the meetings last longer than 30 minutes and some even for hours.
- Too large meetings: In most meetings, only a small percentage of attendees consists of people who actually need to be there. Many other people are wasting their time sitting in meetings that aren't relevant to them.
- Distractions in the meetings: Distractions such as cell phones and side conversations can derail meetings and waste time.
- Unproductive meetings: ?Many meetings where several attendees find their presence irrelevant, tend to become less productive. A survey found that 47% of employees considered meetings to be their biggest waste of time at work and 39% of employees admitted to dozing off during a meeting. Disruptions, distractions and unfocussed discussions make meetings unproductive.
- Negative impact of technology: With the rise of video conferencing, screen sharing, and collaboration tools, meetings can now take place remotely and without requiring participants to move to meeting venue. While there are many advantages of this development; the significant decrease in cost and the advance intimation time required to convene the meeting are very much responsible for increased number of meetings being held without adequate prior planning. Further, in hybrid type meetings, remote participants may feel less engaged or accountable during their virtual participation.
The above overview leads us to clues for prerequisites to improve effectiveness of meetings.
How to ensure effective and efficient meetings
A meeting needs to be conducted such that the objective of the meeting is achieved by investing minimum amount of time and the process also makes participants satisfied about the usefulness of time devoted by them. There are a number of things that organizations can do to reduce the amount of time wasted in meetings and improve participant engagement.
By implementing some simple strategies indicated below, organizations can make their meetings more productive and efficient.
- Only schedule meetings when necessary: Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself if the information could be shared or the decision made in another way. Having meetings for meetings’ sake or to keep up with custom is a vice.
- Set the meeting’s objective: Have a clarity whether the meeting is required to generate new ideas, to gather information, or to make decisions, or for a combination of the above?
- Invite the right people: Only invite people who are essential to the meeting and who can contribute to the discussion. This will help to reduce the size of the meeting and ensure that everyone's time is valued. If someone is to be present only to ensure that they are also informed, a brief summary by email after the meeting will serve the purpose.? Invite only those for whom the discussed topic is relevant.
- Set the start and end time: This shows respect for everyone's time and helps to keep the meeting on track. Shorter meetings tend to be more productive than longer ones. To make sure your meetings stay focused, try to keep them under 60 minutes whenever possible.
- Develop a good agenda: In order to achieve the objective of the meeting, a thorough agenda is crucial. The agenda sets the tone for the whole conversation and helps to get the meeting back to focus if people lose track of the discussion. The agenda should include the time, duration and venue of the meeting, list of people attending, a sequenced list of topics to be covered and who will address each topic. Further, it should also provide any background information participants need to know about the subject.
- Share goal and agenda for the meeting with participants in advance: This will help everyone to come prepared and focused. Telling them exactly what will be discussed in advance will avoid anyone feeling like their opinions do not matter. Clear communication about goals and agendas for the meeting will help to ensure that the meeting stays on track. Having the agenda helps participants to come prepared and reduces rambling.
- Start and end on time: Enforce time limits for all meetings. This will help to keep the meeting on track and prevent it from running over. The meeting leader should not keep people waiting. Similarly, waiting for any attendee is unfair to those who show up on time. Don’t wait for them. Starting the meeting exactly at scheduled time sends a clear message to the latecomers that everyone’s time is precious, and develops a reputation for promptness. However, just as important as starting on time is ending on time. As you create your agenda and schedule your talking points, determine how long you will discuss each topic and allocate your time accordingly. Assign one member of the meeting to keep track of time vis-à-vis agenda.
- Stay focused: Avoid side conversations and distractions. If the meeting gets off track, gently bring it back to the agenda. To minimize distractions, ask participants to turn off their cell phones and discourage side conversations. If someone tends to go off telling stories not connected to the topic, the meeting needs to be rerailed back to the topic
- Control scope creep: Scope creep refers to constant uncontrollable changes in a meeting’s scope. This can occur when the agenda is not properly defined or the discussion is led by someone deliberately with the intent of concealing facts.
- Stop multitasking: Multitasking has become a way of our modern, connected life. But, one participant checking his e-mail or message during the meeting distracts others too. One person’s mobile ringing diverts attention of entire meeting. The meetings should be conducted with minimal scope for such distractions. Timed agenda with assigned meeting roles like facilitation, note-taking etc. help reduce multitasking. In short and punctual meetings, a no-mobile policy can also be adhered to.
- Be concise and to the point: Avoid rambling or repeating yourself. This will help in keeping meeting short and maintaining focused energy during discussion.
- Adopt a clear communication style:?it’s important to articulate the ideas and opinions clearly and also to encourage others to do the same and keep everything a lot simpler and clearer. Suggest new solutions to the problems and focus on what can be done, rather than what can’t. It will help to promote a positive environment between the people attending the meeting.
- Allow some time for brainstorming and open conversation: This will let people feel that their opinions matter. The meeting will yield better ideas when people share individual perspectives, bounce thoughts and brainstorm.
- Encourage participation: Give everyone a chance to contribute and share their ideas. ?Getting everyone engaged and participating in meetings is one of the biggest challenges that the leader has to face. Assigning relevant roles, topics, or updates that each participant can share with everyone is a good strategy to prevent that only a few dominate the whole conversation and to ensure everyone’s participation. Inviting only those who really need to attend also helps.
- Make decisions: If the meeting is to make a decision, make sure that it happens. If you got to the end of the meeting without having actionable next steps, the meeting should be considered wasted time.
- Be firm but also flexible: As some agenda point is discussed in the meeting, new issues or topics of discussion are likely to come up. If relevant to all the attendees and pertinent to the objectives of the meeting, it’s a good idea to explore these new topics, if you have time. Else, decide whether to talk about the issue with the relevant individuals after the meeting or to hold another meeting. But always make sure to end the meeting on time.
- Take notes: Every meeting should involve notes being taken. Whether there is someone specifically attending the meeting whose job this is or not, every participant should take notes on the topics that matter most to them and their workload, especially when tasks are being delegated.?
After the agenda points have been covered, it’s important to bring the meeting to a logical conclusion.?It is expected from the leader of the meeting to ask anyone who has anything to add, and provide them the opportunity either to do so in the meeting or to discuss after the meeting – depending upon the issue and time.
It is nice to quickly summarize what was deliberated and also to make note of items that require further discussion at a later date, such as any work that needs to be completed by a set deadline.?
Leader should ensure at end of the meeting that everyone understands the next steps to be taken by them.?It is also desirable to set a date for the next meeting – if required – and ask participants if they can commit to it.
- Share meeting notes:? Sending a breakdown of the meeting afterwards helps to ensure everyone who was present has necessary information including the actions to be taken and also serves as reminder of the things that were discussed and the next steps the team agreed on. This way, everyone can have that information and work from it. Further, it helps in assigning appropriate responsibilities and accountabilities.
- Get feedback: Ask participants for feedback on the meeting and about their idea about how this meeting could have been made more effective and efficient.
- Follow up: Follow up with attendees to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding next steps and action items.
Learning how to lead a meeting needs a resolve. Generally, leaders in the organization become accustomed to the way meetings have been happening. To change from the legacy way requires organization, preparation, and focus. But that investment is worth it.
?Please share in the comments whether you attended any meeting during last one month that wasted your time? If yes, what is your experience about severity and occurrence of such ones?
