Useless Meetings

I used to work for an XO that absolutely hated useless meetings. [In my Big XO voice...] "Either one works. Or one meets. But one does not do both." The XO would be on his usual daily warpath, "Aye! When do you boys get any work done around here? Every time I come around, you fellas are jawjackin' and skylarkin' around the conference table. Turn To, Shipmates!"

The more senior I got, the more I started to realize that Big XO had it right the whole time. When I eventually became an Executive Officer myself, I got rid of a ton of useless meetings.

And here was my test: I looked at the calendar and drew a line in and a line out from the meeting. The line in: Who do I need stuff from. The line out: Who do I give stuff to. If there were no names or organizations on either one of those lines, CANCEL IT! NO MEETING!

My Thoughts on Meetings (And it took me years of trial and error to develop this. Don't think I was an overnight success...): A meeting should accomplish at least one of three things:

1. Drive a decision - when we walk out of the conference room, the decision will have been made and the way ahead determined
2. Meet a Mandate - there is some rule or policy or guidance from higher that says, "You must have this meeting"
3. Produce a Deliverable - when we walk out of the conference room, I will have in my hand some "thing" that I was required to put in somebody else's hand.

If you are scheduling a meeting that does not do one of these three things, your meeting is useless and you are wasting people's time. Furthermore, as the scheduler of the meeting, you should know the answer to this question BEFORE you schedule the meeting. And you should put the reason for the meeting in the meeting request. I shouldn't have to ask you.

And don't take it personally. This has nothing to do with you. The reality is that as I stare at my calendar, there are at least four meetings all at the same time all in different locations. The purpose and objective of the meeting determines how I prioritize which ones I do/do not attend. If your meeting request doesn't have enough information in it...DECLINED!

And lastly, let me say this. This is key. Disseminating information is NOT a good reason to have a meeting. How many meetings could have really been smartly worded emails? We don't need to have a meeting to communicate, just communicate. In every office setting there are a menagerie of collaborative tools to pass information and data, use them.

And for goodness sake, do NOT schedule a meeting just to schedule another meeting. That's what emails are for. According to Forbes, half of all meetings are wasted time:

• 40% of workers waste up to 30 minutes just searching for a space for meetings
• The average worker spends an hour and 9 minutes simply preparing for each meeting
• 71% of professionals waste time every week due to unnecessary or cancelled meetings?
• 31 hours are spent on unproductive meetings monthly
• Average delay per meeting for employees is 10 minutes and 40 seconds, equivalent to 3 days and 2 hours lost annually
• The salary cost of an hour-long meeting with 5 attendees (from specialist to director level) is $338 USD?

The Math: If the average employee makes $100/hr, and you have 5 employees per meeting, that's $500 per meeting in lost man-hours. If those employees average 4 meetings per day, that's $2,000 a day, $10,000 per week.

"Either one works. Or one meets. But one does not do both." - Big XO