Thirty-seven billion dollars a year is how much money companies across the USA are wasting in salaries for employees to attend unnecessary meetings. In other words, the average US worker attends 62 meetings each month and half are reported as a waste of time due to lack of productivity. Ouch. And if we’re honest, most of us know this truth from firsthand experiences.
Unless you’re the lone ranger, meetings are a necessity to keep projects moving along, people on the same page and achieving revenue and other objectives. Without them or some other collaborative tools like Slack, businesses fail, internal departments become misaligned and decision-making is difficult and slow. In order to reduce time waste there are several factors to be considered.
Gathering to Make Business Meetings Productive
There’s no worse feeling than wasting time especially when you’re docket is full and your mind wants to be concentrating on something it deems more critical. It’s why many CEOs open meetings with a simple question: is there a decision to be made?
All hands type meetings are famous for drawing a yawn because they’re often redundant, veer off topic easily, speak to things that don’t impact everyone and cause a lot of water cooler chitchat. There are ways to make them better of course but when thinking about meetings and productivity, they’re a good example of meeting types that cause worker slow downs.
Before sending a meeting invite, think about the attendee list and check it against the objectives by answering this: What is the meeting accomplishing? If it’s a brainstorming session, you might not need the tactical execution team. If it’s a project status meeting, you might not want to involve marketing unless launch is nearing. Being aware of roles versus outcomes is critical for meeting efficiency.
Think big and utilize a bigger team in the ideation phase
When starting a project, particularly when it includes creative work and ideas, it’s important to gather all available resources. Tom in accounting might be a photographer in his off time; Sally in HR might be an excellent chef, even though their role in the company isn’t considered creative doesn’t mean they aren’t creative people with great ideas. Gather all sources and send an agenda with specifics you want accomplished and what you’re asking of the participants so they have time to gather and develop concepts. Then utilize the whole team to document, combine, and slice and dice the ideas into elements that make up the overall plan.
Good timing is key
If possible, create short meetings; best is to aim for under 30-minutes. This truncated time helps everyone stay on track, reduces relaxed feelings that lead to off-topic conversations and leaves no time for waste. Other tactics work well too; for example many companies include standing meetings.
Furthermore, scheduling decision-making meetings during times where the team may be tired or hungry is a mistake simply because of human nature. So, avoid just before lunch and at the end of the day to side-step people making the simplest possible decision as fast as they can.
Learn what works best in your unique situation
Great leaders understand their audience (employees) and about how their motivators impacts productivity. In other words, it’s valuable to know who performs well while under the gun of deadlines and which people covet structure and stability with clearly mapped expectations. Most likely your team will be a diverse mix so taking time to learn a bit about their preferred work style goes a long way to creating efficiency in meetings. Both will assist in delivering upfront information that facilitates prepared teams and drives success.
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