Why Meetings Are Useless

Okay, okay, I'm not saying that they are totally useless and you shouldn't do it anymore. I'm just saying why meetings often become useless and counter-productive because of certain reasons, and if you're a Malaysian, maybe you can relate to the statement as well; you know, with all the gossipping slipped into each meeting. Let me tell you why the meetings we have done so far became useless.

We meet just because

Some or should I say most companies and departments of big companies usually have a weekly obligatory meeting. So we sit there together in a room, in a meeting, listening to things we don't need to whilst our work are left undone. All those time wasted, man, imagine if we used it.

 Meetings are too general

Listen, not everybody has to be in every meeting. This is not a collective huddle that has to include every player. Our meetings often demanded everybody; even unrelated ones to the room. Again, they are not going to contribute anything or neither are they going to benefit from it. It's just wasting their time, really. 

We don't have a clear agenda

Have you ever experienced a long-dragged meeting before? Where the boss went on and on about his vacation in Malibu for 2 whole hours before getting to the 'objective' of the meeting? Well maybe it's not that exaggerated, but you get what I mean. When we don't have a clear objective or agenda lined up, we tend to stray away from the main purpose. And no, Munah, we don't want to listen to your cat's story!

We don't know how to stop, ironically

It's the end of the meeting (supposedly) but why does Munah still trying to open a new unrelated topic about her cat's adventure at the daycare? That's the problem, we don't know how to end meetings. We still want to speak somehow. For God sake people, learn to say "okay, we're done, thank you". Not that hard is it?

We never focus in meetings anyway

Well, that's what you get when you have to go through number 1 to 4. For those who feel that the meeting is not relevant, they tend to multitask most of the time. This is very opposed to the objective of a meeting itself; to discuss important issues TOGETHER. When people multitask and barely listen to the others speaking, then what's the point of the meeting anyway?

Now that we know why meetings are useless, these are some of the things you can do to solve that problem. 

1. Arrange shorter meetings. Put a time restriction and adhere to it.
2. Define who needs to be in the meeting. Avoid including Munah, she's just going to tell us about her cat stories anyway.
3. Set clear expectations and outcome from the meeting. Steer it to achieve those things.
4. Stay focused on the topic at hand. Other topics are for other meetings.
5. Ban any multitasking endeavour. Get everybody engaged and end it fast. You stop typing that email Munah, you'll have plenty of time after this. If only you stopped talking about your 12 cats.
6. Send materials beforehand. People will know the gist of the meeting prior to it and that'll help the flow of it.

And that's all people! Let's start making meetings not useless again. Time wasted equals money burned. Oh and yes, I wonder why were there so much food prepared everytime there is a meeting especially in big companies and government departments? Hmm...