How to avoid spending more than four hours a day in poorly run meetings (part 2)

Poorly run meetings are the biggest time sink in organizations: The time we spend in meetings each week has increased by more than 50% since the beginning of the pandemic.

The number of meetings, in turn, has grown even more starkly, from 15.1 meetings in February 2020 to 25.6 in November 2021 – that’s a whopping 70% in just 20 months.

On top of having meetings for the right tasks, setting them up with the appropriate degree of organization and process is crucial to get both of these numbers down. Here are three tips to help you do just that.

First, limit ambiguity. Whenever you’re setting up a meeting, include an agenda with its objective and the issues you want to discuss. When being asked to attend a meeting without an agenda, follow productivity expert Chris Bailey’s advice and see what happens: “Whenever I’m invited to a meeting without an agenda, regardless of whom it’s with, I’ll ask for the objective”. That question will also help you have meetings around what they are best for: consensus building.

Second, reduce time. Again, if four participants meet up for one hour, that amounts to half a day’s worth of work. To decrease overall meeting time, you can work on the number of participants and duration. To reduce the former, keep meetings as small as possible. Only invite co-workers that need to be present to accomplish the meeting’s objective, and make attendance optional for those whose presence isn’t crucial. To reduce duration, a good start is to cut down 30-minute meetings to 25 minutes, and 60-minute meetings to 50 minutes. Research by Microsoft shows that having a 5- to 10-minute buffer between meetings not only enables better engagement and focus, but also reduces stress levels.

Third, avoid bookending the week. Friday afternoon meetings make it hard for co-workers to wrap up important work, while Monday morning meetings might prompt them to work over the weekend. By avoiding meetings late on Fridays, you allow your co-workers to transition into a more refreshing weekend. And by not having meetings early on Mondays, you give them time to better prepare for productive collaboration throughout the week.

Pro tip: Challenge recurring meetings. According to a study by Bain & Company, one weekly meeting of mid-level managers can cost a large company more than $15 million a year. Thus, the only permanently recurring meeting you should have is a "meeting audit" with yourself. As per collaboration expert Rob Cross: “Look back four or five months to identify recurring group activities, meetings, or exchanges that aren’t core to your success and could be declined or offered to others as a developmental opportunity”.

If you liked this post, please share it with others:

Until next week,
Christian