Still Too Many Meetings
Despite all that has been written and proselytized about how to have productive meetings, my experience in the conference rooms has changed little over the years. It doesn?t seem to matter the size of the organization or the efforts put forth educating the work force.
There are still too many meetings and most of them are not as productive as they need to be. Can you relate? If not, please leave a comment and share your experiences with functional, productive meetings.
Why can?t we conquer this issue in the corporate world? People have become experts in teaching companies how to transform an hour meeting into day?s worth of productivity. They come and they leave. The responsibility to run consistently excellent meetings falls on management. As managers, we struggle with this. We often fail those whom we serve.
Most meetings are scheduled to run one hour. I am not sure if Outlook has driven us to change what could be a 20 minute meeting into an hour, or we just feel like we cannot accomplish anything in less than an hour. Much of it is a result of our corporate culture. Rarely do I feel that my hour long meetings actually needed to last that long. If we followed the rules to run an effective meeting that are posted in the conference room, we might be more successful.
So why do we succumb to our old habits and why do all stand around the water cooler griping about how many meetings we have to attend? I think as managers we have learned to thrive on it.
Here is a confession as a manager.
One of my employees once told me that the way managers justified their roles in the company was to make sure that their calendar was completely full of meetings. This employee clarified this claim by saying that if managers did not have all of the meetings to attend, what would they really do?
Hmm. Perception is reality.
What could I say other than, ?Yeah seems that way, doesn?t it.?
Comment by NimrodSonOfCush
Very interesting observation. As I have struggled with the same thing for the past few years, I’ve recently adopted some new techniques to keep meetings to less than an hour. This only works with meetings that I host, not with ones that my boss hosts, but for the most part, it has saved me a lot of time.
First, I am NOT afraid to bring people back on point. It is mandatory. People now know that if you go off topic, I will bring you back. If you want to discuss some other topic, schedule a meeting with someone else!
Second, a meeting ends a the specified time, whether there is resolution or not! It puts pressure on people to make their point and move on. If the time has expired and the mission is not accomplished, then the meeting sponsor is free to schedule another meeting in another week or two when everyone is available again.
Third, if you really want something done, you schedule an informal hallway meeting with decision makers and try to get everything explained there. Then when the formal meeting happens, it is just that: a formality.