“Please, for the love of humanity, not another pointless meeting.” At some point in the last 30-days you’ve uttered some form of those words. We all have. The statistics don’t lie.
Atlassian recently published data suggesting half (yes, HALF) of all meetings are thought to be a waste of time by at least someone in the room. The average employee sits in on 62 meetings a month, or 31 hours of meetings. That’s a whole lot of wasted time. It’s nearly two whole workdays you spend in frivolous meetings. And yet companies still blame lost productivity on Facebook and texting.
Atlassian estimates US businesses lose $37 billion in salary due to unnecessary meetings. Which, for some of you may not be surprising, given how many meetings are forced upon you on an average week.
But how do we change this? How do we reclaim our time from unnecessary meetings?
Awareness is huge. Often, we aren’t fully aware just how precious time is. When scheduling meetings, we don’t stop and think about the schedules of the people we’re inviting to the meetings (other than “they have an opening in Outlook”). Everyone’s time is valuable, and when we put that knowledge into practice we can be consciously aware of whether or not a meeting is a waste of time for someone before we even invite them.
Agenda’s are key. Don’t let the first five minutes of a meeting be the first time the attendees see an agenda. Send an agenda out with the invite, or at least a day in advance to the meeting. It allows everyone to prepare for what’s to be discussed and gives the group an idea on what to expect. Knowing what is going to be talked about will majorly cut down on time spent trying to bring everyone up to speed.
Put down the phone. Phone and laptops alike are a major distraction for everyone in the room. Make sure the people in the meeting are only using their technology if it’s absolutely necessary. Atlassian reports 73% of people do other work in meetings, which hampers their engagement and only drags the meeting out longer than it needed to be. So, for the sake of everyone’s time – put down the phone.
Invite the right people. Having the wrong people, or even too many people in a meeting can lead to distractions, over communication, and increased confusion. Just because you’re working as a team on a particular project, doesn’t mean the whole team needs to be present for every meeting. This is a big part of awareness – knowing who, and who doesn’t belong.
Email can be a savior. If you’re looking to share a particular update or get a progress report on a project, a meeting may be a waste of time. Send an email to the necessary people, or use a collaborative communication tool like Slack. We’ve all been in a meeting before where we thought the entire thing could have been said more effectively in an email.
“Brevity is the soul of wit.” Shakespeare was on to something with this one. Just because you have an hour of time scheduled, doesn’t mean you have to use the entire hour. It’s okay if you end 15 minutes early. In fact, most people would probably thank you. Give back some time if you can.
Take notes and recap. It is always helpful to assign someone to take notes during the meeting and send them out to everyone shortly after the meeting. This is helpful for people as a reminder of what was discussed, and will bring people up to speed if they missed the meeting.
Meetings shouldn’t feel pointless and ineffective. It’s on all of us to be aware and be engaged in the process. By doing so, the number of “waste of time” meetings we find ourselves in will significantly drop. Let's stop having ineffective meetings.
