Let’s do something about our meetings

Did you know that on average employees spend six hours a week and managers twenty three hours a week in meetings? That over one third of meetings are unnecessary which equates to up to 8 hours of lost productivity each week? A study by Verizon Conferencing found that US Companies waste at least $37 billion dollars a year in unproductive meetings?

At a time where organisations are trying to reduce margins in a highly competitive market conditions, this controllable waste of productivity and cost would seem like a no brainer to change, so why don’t we? Is it that we now expect others to help solve all of our problems so we have meetings for every single problem and decision, or is it just because that is the way we have always done business?

Irrespective of the reason, the bottom line is that focusing on improving your meeting habits can have a major impact on your teams productivity and business bottom line.

Projects such as new technology implementations are an additional layer of work activity on top of business as usual for most employees, ensuring project meetings don't waste resource time and effectively move projects forward is paramount.  

 Here are a few tips based on the book "Momentum by Mamie Kanfer Stewart focused on creating effective, engaging and enjoyable meetings. 

 There are only 6 reasons why you should be having a meeting, outside this look at replacing meetings with other forms of communication.  

• Connect   

• Align 

• Decide 

• Ideate/Brainstorm 

• Plan  

• Produce  

 Not everyone has to be invited to every meeting, break stakeholders down to these three groups, only the engaged people actually have to be in the room. 

• Consulted 

• Informed 

• Engaged 

 The desired outcome is the driving force of any meeting, ensure this is clear to all participants up front. 

 Set some norms for how your meetings will be run particularly these below  

• Do the pre-work before the meeting so you are not wasting others time in the meeting. 

• Be on time - be respectful of others 

• Stay on topic - the desired outcome should lead the majority of discussions, park any side issues that come up to ensure you reach your goal. 

• Ensure there is balanced participation in the room so everyone's opinion is heard. 

Send out actions and the associated people responsible for these straight after your meeting, there is no point getting to a final consensus only to find you are discussing the same thing at the next meeting as no one has taken responsibility for actioning it. 

These are just a few tips that highlight the importance of running effective meetings, the last and most critical point is that the way you run your meetings reflects the culture of your organisation so improve your habits in meetings and benefit from the improvement in your organisations culture and bottom line.