Are your meetings effective?

Meetings are becoming more and more a central part of almost all organisations. According to a study, in the US alone workers have 11 million meetings a day, which adds up to 55 million meetings per week or 2860 million meetings per year. This tendency is growing at an enormous rate. Since 2000, the time employees spend in meetings has risen by around 10% each year.

Although usually companies don’t think about meetings in terms of how much they cost, the truth is that they cost a lot, directly and indirectly. That cost can become an expense or an investment depending on the benefits harvested from those meetings. Analysing the effectiveness of those meetings, and the value they are (or aren’t) creating is pivotal to get the most out of them.

Within organisations, meetings play a huge role in relationship building, employee socialisation, communication, and shaping of the culture. They can be a source of great motivation… or great discouragement. Many different studies seem to indicate that meetings perceived as ineffective are the single most powerful factor of job dissatisfaction, and make employees more predisposed to leave.

Having too many meetings can also be a problem. People with a strong desire to get more work done tend to become more unsatisfied when they have to attend more meetings.

Every minute spent on a meeting is time not spent doing “real work”. When those meetings are seen as non productive all that time is wasted and employees will try to compensate with more work hours which increases stress, dissatisfaction, and decreases morale.

Taking all this into consideration there are a few strategies that organisations can follow to prevent an excess of meetings and to keep the quality of each meeting at a high standard.

Regarding quantity, some good rules to have in mind are:

1. The topic discussed can’t be effectively discussed in any other form. Before scheduling a meeting, one should think if there isn’t a more effective way of discussing the subject. Email, google docs, slack can be amazing solutions for discussing some subjects without forcing people to be in a certain place at a certain time.
2. Only make mandatory the presence of employees that are absolutely needed to the topic discussion. One of the worst things about meetings is that sometimes employees have to be in meetings that they can’t really contribute much to. 9 out of 10 people say they daydream in meetings. Don’t make them be there. This way the amount of meetings each person has to attend is reduced and they can use their time in a more valuable way.
3. The goals of the meeting are well defined. If the goals are clear it’s more likely that they will be reached and no more additional meetings will be needed to discuss the same subject.

In terms of quality, there are also a few good tips that everyone can follow:

1. Prepare the meeting and start on time. Giving a detailed agenda and necessary documentation ahead of time, as well as starting on time can reduce meeting duration up to 80% and make the discussion more productive.
2. Make meetings about finding solutions and not discussing problems. Negative ways of communication like criticising or complaining seem to reduce meeting satisfaction, team productivity and organisational success. Try to focus the debate on finding solutions rather than discussing the problem itself.
3. Establish clear ground rules. One big problem with meetings is that the discussions tend to wander to side topics and most of the time run for way longer than scheduled (or create the need for more meetings about the same subject). Make sure the discussions keep on topic and that the time scheduled is respected.
4. Try new techniques and new locations. Sometimes trying different approaches to meetings and / or moving meetings to new locations can make them more productive. Try to stimulate participation and ideas. Techniques like assigning roles (role of customer, role of a stakeholder not represented in the meeting) can help produce a more fruitful discussion. Holding meetings in new places can also aid in fostering creativity and openness.
5. Build mechanisms for the assessment of meetings. Without knowing how people feel about the meetings they are having, which aspects they like the most or which parts they dislike, companies can’t decide effectively which practices to keep and which ones to change or drop.

Meetings can be a great way of quickly finding a solution for a complex problem and gather the opinion of multiple stakeholders. It can also be a great vehicle to spread information across an organisation. It’s crucial that people perceive the meetings they attend as a way of producing better work and not as an obstacle to their productivity and ability to contribute with better results for the company’s goals.

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