Get a Handle on Your Company’s Meetings
As a leader, I’ve joined my fair share of meetings that were, what may be considered, pointless, a huge waste of time, or unfocused. I’m sure you have too.
Like many, over the last couple of years I’ve scrutinized how I invest my time more than ever. This limited resource is one of our most highly valued assets, both personally and professionally. I started saying no to commitments that were draining and saying yes to meaningful, value added opportunities. This shift in approach created space for what really matters and enabled growth. I can certainly identify with how distracting scheduled meetings can be, interfering with the mental flow necessary for meaningful output.
Being forced to reckon with a new work environment, limited travel, health concerns, and other pandemic related life changes, we collectively reevaluated our priorities and adapted how we work and communicate so life could go on. But have we really thought through how much time we’re spending on meetings?
According to Harvard Business Review, back in 2018:
U.S. companies spend more than $37 billion dollars a year on meetings. Employees in American companies spend more than one-third of their time in meetings. And 71% of senior managers view meetings as unproductive.
These figures, while several years old, are staggering. Any entrepreneur or operator in the start up space should be working towards increasing capital efficiency, using the company’s cash to operate efficiently.
Take a solid look at your own weekly and monthly calendar. Are you blocking off time to think, be creative, or have focused time to work or are you in back-to-back meetings scrambling to finish your projects at night after the kids go to bed when the rest of your team is offline? Now take a look at your employees’ calendars.
Your mind may be blown as you become more aware of the counterproductive impact and astronomical cost of your company’s meetings at this point.
Fix your meeting culture
Below you’ll find some tips for improving the quality and output of your company’s meetings.
Be highly intentional about the meetings you put on the calendar. Consider what you want to accomplish and if it requires a real time verbal discussion or if it can be handled asynchronously - email/Slack/Trello/Asana/Jira/Google Docs/video update your team can watch on their own time. Discussions about implementing major changes or sorting out complex problems may be best suited for a verbal discussion to avoid ambiguity or misunderstanding.
Be okay with asking for more information about others’ meetings if the agenda is unclear. This open dialogue will encourage time better spent.
Major company planning (such as annual or quarterly goal setting) is best handled in-person in a dedicated time and place, allowing for in depth focus and presence shared amongst leaders.
Continue to prioritize one on one meetings between leaders and their teams. This time should be sacred and designed to support your employees’ growth and success.
Document how your company and teams meet wherever you store your processes. This will make it easy for newcomers to get up to speed on how meetings work.
Always have an agenda shared in advance and set the expectation that attendees should come prepared. What should be accomplished during this meeting? What problem(s) are we looking to solve?
Invite only those relevant to the topic at hand and allow everyone else to sit it out.
Accelerate the discussion, reducing your meeting time from 30 minutes to 25 or 60 minutes to 50.
Time box and budget a limited amount of time you’ll spend on each topic. Once the outcome is complete, you can always end the meeting early.
Adopt a meaningful meeting cadence. Do you really need recurring weekly or monthly meetings or can these simply be “as needed”?
Intentionally create shared experiences for your team so they are able to build rapport and have fun together. This meaningful connection is instrumental in facilitating trust amongst the team.
Inspiration
Some companies, such as Corporate Finance Institute, have implemented monthly “focus days” which have become so popular and effective that they’ve turned into “focus weeks”. There are no scheduled internal meetings on the calendar during a full business week once per quarter, allowing for collective focus. These are thoughtfully scheduled for the last week before the end of the quarter, a time often consumed with a notorious push to finalize a committed project or goal.
The team might need to hop on an impromptu call or Slack discussion to collaborate on something, but there are no pre-scheduled meetings on the calendar for anyone in the company during these times. Everyone is able to have time to think and work, relatively uninterrupted, gaining valuable space to make true progress and complete tasks. Impressive, right? Feasible? Yes. CFI put this into practice earlier this year and it is now a company-wide norm.
Putting real change into practice
Leadership must align on the issues: meetings are costly, there are too many meetings, meetings aren’t driving ROI, meetings are detracting from meaningful progress towards company goals, etc.
Bring this topic to your leadership team and have a frank discussion about the quantity and quality of meetings your team is spending time (and money!) on. Talk about the ideal outcome. What value do you collectively want to gain from company and team meetings? This is an issue to be solved together.
Get employee feedback. You can always send a survey to the team or company-wide to better understand whether meetings are time well spent, enthusiasm for a particular meeting format, and to gather ideas for improvement. Take this input into consideration as you plan for the future.
Borrow ideas from other companies and make them your own or come up with something totally unique that works for your team. You’re the curator of your employee experience and decide how to invest your limited resources. Ideally you’ll learn and pivot, optimizing your meetings over time.