“Let’s find some time on my calendar.” Seven words that generally lead to wasted time in the workplace.
The traditional meeting landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. With data showing that professionals now spend over half of their 40-hour workweek in meetings, it's crucial to streamline these time sucks to enhance productivity and employee satisfaction. Whether you work in-person or remotely, time wasted is time wasted.
Here are some strategies to reduce time spent on unimportant meetings and make the necessary ones more effective.
Prioritize
Before scheduling a meeting, ask yourself if the objective can be achieved through an email or a quick chat. If a meeting is essential, clearly define its purpose to ensure it is focused and necessary.
For the love of God, no one should ever walk away from your meeting with the sentiment, “That could have been an email.”
Agenda Set
There was nothing more irritating in my experiences than joining a meeting only to have the organizer essentially punt to others about the topic, focus and mere point of the meeting because he/she was in back-to-back meetings (a common foul among the poor meeting folk), or merely unfocused and disorganized enough to fail to plan for the conversation. A well-planned meeting with a clear agenda is more likely to engage participants and stay on track. This approach minimizes the risk of the meeting drifting off-topic and becoming unproductive. And an agenda doesn’t always have to be set in stone and sent out (21) days in advance. So long as you have a plan, your colleagues will have appreciation for it.
Invites
Another trait among poor meeting managers is the over-invite. It’s a security blanket that allows them to avoid putting any thought into the meeting. By inviting nearly everyone on the team, it allows everyone to participate and again, likely cover up the fact that the meeting owner has no plan for the meeting. Invite only those whose presence is crucial to the meeting's objectives. Overcrowding meetings with unnecessary attendees can lead to inefficiencies and a lack of focus. Trust me, people will not take offense to not being invited to meetings they know they don’t need to attend.
Time Management
Shorter meetings have become more prevalent post-pandemic. Aim to keep meetings concise and to the point. If the invite states a 30-minute duration, ensure the discussion wraps up within this timeframe. I had a colleague who absolutely loved the 15-minute meeting. And over time, so did we. I also had a CEO tell me on my first week on the job at a major corporation that he maintains his workload in large part by keeping his meetings on time. They end when they’re scheduled to end. Perhaps easy for a CEO to say…but still highly aspirational.
Leverage Technology
With the rise of virtual meetings, it's essential to use video and audio conferencing tools effectively. These tools should enhance, not hinder, meeting productivity. There are a ton of great AI-based note taking tools that can save a lot of time and ensure all those who attended – and even those who didn’t – are literally on the same page post-meeting. Big fan of Loop for all you Zoom users.
Encourage Participation
Ensure that all attendees have an opportunity to contribute. This not only makes meetings more democratic but also leverages the diverse ideas and perspectives of the team. After all, if you have the right attendees and an agenda filled with topics, you need people to contribute!
Optimize Meeting Frequency
Regularly review the number and frequency of meetings. If a meeting can be replaced with an email update or a shared document, opt for these more efficient communication methods. Or drop the meeting altogether. In my startup time, we often found that meetings designed for a specific communications function in our earlier stage became redundant or meaningless as our communication improved in later stages of the business. So we dropped the meeting altogether. Try to avoid having meetings for the sake of having the meeting.
Streamline Decision Processes
Meetings should be a platform for decisive action, not endless deliberation. Encourage focused discussion and timely decision-making to avoid unnecessary follow-up meetings. Perhaps one of the VERY WORST time sucks in all of time sucker – the post-meeting meeting. Sure, it might be required if whittling down participants, but oftentimes these become recap and commiseration sessions. Do that over an adult beverage.
Develop & Train Meeting Skills
Sounds odd, I know. But this shows how dialed in to operational excellence your org can be. Training employees and managers in effective meeting facilitation, active listening, and empathetic communication can significantly improve meeting quality and productivity.
Dedicated Focus Time
Some companies have successfully implemented no-meeting days, leading to increased efficiency and reduced stress. Consider designating specific days where meetings are discouraged, allowing employees uninterrupted time to focus on their work. Obviously this can be very difficult when dealing with external clients, agencies, creatives and contributors. That said, intestinal fortitude can prevail. Poor meeting managers often are poor time managers, too.
Feedback & Improvement
Solicit feedback from meeting participants to understand what works and what doesn’t. This can help in continuously refining the meeting process. We frequently asked about the importance of this meeting, or the relevance of that one. I once pushed for trimming our weekly team meeting because it languished week after week without focus. We then created a rotation for ownership of that meeting, and it became much more engaging.
Manage Zoom Fatigue
Be mindful of the cognitive load that virtual meetings place on employees. Offer alternatives like audio-only meetings or walking meetings to alleviate virtual fatigue. Always give people the option to be off camera. Management ought to show that they can do that, too.
Utilize AI
Embrace AI and machine learning tools to analyze meeting patterns and optimize their efficiency. These technologies can provide insights into meeting length, frequency, and participant engagement. They also can offer insight into keyword usage, crutch words and other details that can be useful for sales and product calls.
I realize that a blog post dedicated to meetings can be considered overkill by some. Then again, having half of my week owned by superfluous meetings is even worse. By adopting these strategies, you can significantly reduce the time spent on unimportant meetings, allowing for more productive use of work hours. Remember, the goal is not to eliminate meetings entirely but to ensure that the meetings held are purposeful, efficient, and value-adding.
Otherwise, it could have been an email.
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