Meeting time

Meetings come with a cost.

But it’s easy to forget when it’s not your money.

I’ll bet that you spent a good proportion of last week in meetings. And this week is looking the same?

How many people were attending? For how long? And how often? It all adds up.

It’s a triple threat: there’s the time cost. The productivity cost. And the cultural, energy cost – the one that determines morale, effort, and longevity of a team. Each one still comes with a financial price tag.

Time’s a given. But productivity… surely meetings mean we’re being productive? I don’t know, are you? Honestly.

And if you’re not, bet your bottom dollar, it’s taking its toll on the energy and resilience of your team.

It has been said that meetings are a “tax that’s worth paying” to be part of a supportive working culture.

While being part of something bigger than yourself is a worthy ambition, simply deferring to the idea that meetings are meetings and that’s that seems to be a self-defeating mindset if the goal is to create something meaningful.

In fact, if you want to be part of something bigger than yourself I’d suggest that meetings are the life-force of collaboration and should be the most intense target for improvement in service of your larger goal.

If you’d like to test the idea of whether it’s a tax worth paying, try this meetings cost calculator on a few yours to see if your tax-hours are being spent wisely.

Here are my top 5 ways to put the after burners on your meetings and accelerate progress while reducing the time or number of meetings.

1 - Why are you meeting?

Sounds basic, but do you need a meeting? Is it for information or for collaboration? If it’s the former, share the information and ask for responses asynchronously. If then it’s clear a meeting is required for discussion or decisions, hold a short, concise meeting. If it’s the latter, then what’s being done to facilitate collaboration beyond being in the same place at the same time?

2 - Manage the energy.

Smashing in back-to-back-to-back meetings might seem efficient, but attention lag means that people will still be processing the prior meeting for the first 10-15 minutes of the current one. Or they might be thinking ahead to the next (more important) meeting, so the time will need to be repeated in hopefully more favourable conditions to make any headway – costing even more time.

3 - Make the time inclusive

Cut down jargon. Assumed understanding has the potential for vastly different interpretations and misalignment. If everyone in the meeting isn’t able to understand, they can’t contribute effectively. Use an approach called Work Alone Together – when getting input from the group, start with a minute or two of individual thinking time writing thoughts on sticky notes before sharing as a group. It allows even the most junior or introverted to contribute their valuable thoughts that you might have been missing out on.

4 - Measure progress

Are you getting results? That’s the only thing that matters. If your current meetings are helping you get there, fantastic. But can you refine the process? Work out what your yardstick is. How do you know you have moved things on since the previous meeting? What can you change to see what might work even better?

5- Finished early? Great.

Don’t fill the time. Get on with the ‘real’ work you don’t usually have time for. Look up Parkinson’s Law. And try to reverse engineer it – what could you achieve in less time? Set yourself the challenge.

Read Deep Work by Cal Newport to understand the competing demands of ‘deep work’ (focused, ‘real’ work) and ‘shallow’ work, such as emails and communications, and certainly most meetings. Review your meeting schedule and try to work in larger blocks of time for everyone to benefit from deep work.

If you feel like you’re too busy to change, or not sure what to change, I can help with that.

I run workshops designed to make collaboration inclusive and generate a shared, aligned picture of the challenge.

Not only do you get a more efficient and effective use of time, you get tangible progress facilitated by an expert outsider who is neutral, can ask awkward or basic questions, that people are afraid to ask but want answers to, and will keep things on track time-wise.

If it’s time you tried something different and want to explore what collaboration could look like, visit intrapreneurshops.work or drop me a message on LinkedIn.