“Why Meetings Suck and How to Fix Them”: actionable ideas from Adam Grant

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant released a ReThinking podcast episode in September 2023 that outlines ways to improve your meetings.

Per Steven Rogelberg, an organizational psychologist, "nearly a third of meetings are unnecessary—wasting $25 million a year for every thousand people. But that’s an underestimate. It only accounts for time wasted. It doesn’t include the cost of ideas lost or energy drained."

Grant outlines a number of ways to improve meetings before you schedule one.

(1) Consider when you need a meeting and when you don’t

There are some basic reasons to meet: to decide, learn, bond, or do. If you’re not gathering to achieve one of those goals, you don’t need to gather.

People often want to talk things out, but it doesn’t always do as much good as they expect. Psychologists call it “The Illusion of Conversational Enlightenment.” Instead of opening up fresh perspectives, many meetings just repeat what everyone already knows. Goodbye diversity of thought, hello groupthink. Don't schedule meetings just to chat about something.

(2) Reconsider meeting lengths

Be thoughtful and intentional about the length of time you need for a meeting.

Meetings don't need to be 30 or 60 minutes on the hour; they can be 12 or 23 minutes or start at 3:43pm. Only schedule the meeting for as long as you need it. If a meeting only needs to be 10 minutes, make it 10 minutes.

There are clear benefits of stand-up meetings. If everyone is standing, they tend to be more concise.

Side note: I saw someone post about a meeting where everyone had to do planks. Think how quickly everyone would be done with that meeting. :)

(3) Don’t invite everyone

We don’t need conversations to keep people in the loop. Ask people if they have anything to contribute. If they don’t, you can offer to keep them in the loop on what was shared in the meeting.

Over-inviting is fake inclusion. The only people who need to be in a meeting or those with relevant expertise or authority; everyone else can be updated later.

Microsoft Japan said that meetings with more than 5 people required leadership approval. Having to get permission causes you to pause and think if you need a person at the meeting.

(4) Change the conversation before the meeting

Agendas aren’t necessarily good. Instead of bullet points of topics, make your agendas the questions that need to be answered in the meeting.

By framing your agenda as questions, (a) you know who to invite, (b) you know if the meeting is successful when the questions are answered (and could be ended early), and (c) it allows the meeting attendees to think about the question ahead of time, making the meeting more focused. And if one of your invites answers the questions before the meeting, you can cancel it. How great is that?

Additional Ideas

(5) Change who runs a meeting

Engage different voices to lead the meetings and experiment with different meeting practices. Giving others the opportunity to lead and organize a meeting is a leadership development opportunity for junior staff.?

If you're running a hybrid meeting, include remote employees first. It will increase their engagement.

(6) Consider Ar-Meeting-Geddon

To change bad meeting norms on a drastic scale, try “Ar-Meeting-geddon”: remove all recurring meetings and require everyone to wait 48 hours to two weeks before scheduling new meetings.

(7) Calculate the cost of attendance

Include the employee cost (average hourly salary X # of participants X meeting length) of the meeting in the invite.

Is your meeting worth the staff time it takes to run it?

(8) Make a “No Meetings Day”

Grant says, “Banning meetings one day a week, research suggests, decreases stress, while boosting productivity, collaboration and satisfaction.”

In summary, the best meeting leaders are those that recognize they are a steward of other people’s time. Use that time effectively, efficiently and intentionally.

Adam Grant’s “Worklife” podcast -- September 26, 2023

https://www.ted.com/podcasts/worklife/why-meetings-suck-and-how-to-fix-them-transcript