How does the old joke go?

"Bored with work? Tired of toiling away? Have a meeting!"

With most organizations today, we all too often fall prey to unproductive meetings. This leads to wasted time, frustration, and lower morale. This situation is so common, according to my anecdotal findings, that I wanted to find out if this really is just my own organization or company. In fact, it is not such an isolated or recent phenomenon. A recent USA Today article, talks about a 20 year study on this very topic. The results? Directly from the article:

[On] average employees spend 8½ hours a week in meetings. Middle managers spend 10½ hours, and top executives spend 12.

Is there a Solution? In short: Yes, there is.

The USA Today article supports some of my recent efforts to reduce my painful meeting overhead.

These are some suggestions we (the article and I) have:

If a meeting isn't completely necessary, don't have one.

You would think this is an obvious statement. Yet, as we show day in and day out, meetings are regularly held without a solid purpose or goals in mind. If a regularly scheduled meeting will not require any discussion on its next occurrence, cancel it. You can always call a special meeting if something comes up with enough urgency to require discussion before the next normally scheduled time.

Don't ever hold "status" meetings.

Distribute status documentation to those who have a stake or vested interest instead of getting together to read out the status. If someone has further questions or a point requires discussion after knowing the current status of a particular project or issue, then either email, IM, or other means of communication may be more suited for clarification. Once the point(s) are clarified, update the documentation and redistribute the updated versions or links to online records. If an interactive discussion is required at some point to agree on the updates or changes, then call a meeting together - following the other points of advice, of course.

Always have an agenda with as much specific detail as possible.

Without an agenda for a meeting, important points often don't get the attention they deserve, and new or less critical issues often get too much attention. Unless the meeting is called for a very specific subset of issues and is intended to be highly focused on those few items, consider adding a "roundtable" item so allow for raising other issues if time permits. An agenda should be very clear on what items are open for discussion, who will introduce and lead the discussion, who chairs or coordinates the meeting, and, when appropriate, how long each topic is scheduled for coverage. In really heavily packed meetings with limited available time, listing time limits for issues is very critical. If something may require further discussion, table it, schedule a meeting of only the required participants, and move on to the next agenda item.

Whenever possible, produce or distribute documents or other tools in advance of the meeting.

Sending out presentations or documents for discussion before a meeting allows more people to bring informed options and ideas to the table once the meeting commences. This greatly facilitates discussion on productive levels and reduces time wasted making sure you get a copy of everything to everyone. Obviously in the case of live presentations this is moot, but at least advance warning of the agenda is a good idea.

Don't be afraid to drop agenda items if no discussion is possible or warranted by the time the meeting begins.

This is fairly self-explanatory. If no discussion is warranted, simply make that know or decide that quickly, then offer to provide status information to attendees after the meeting adjourns. this greatly reduces wasted time during the meeting and allows for participants to focus more closely on those items that still need discussion.

These are just some ideas for having more productive meetings. Just by following the above guidelines you will save a great deal of effort and improve the level of participation of your meeting attendees when you do have to call for a meeting.

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