The Meetings That Matter vs. The Meetings That Waste Time
I’m just going to say this…
Your calendar is full. But how much of it makes any difference?
Most leaders spend their days moving from one meeting to another. They feel busy. Needed. Like they’re contributing. But at the end of the week, when they ask themselves what they actually accomplished, they are often disappointed.
But the real problem isn’t too many meetings. It’s too many of the wrong meetings.
Meetings fall into a few categories, and most organizations have no understanding that meetings take on different roles.
Decision meetings. These meetings move the business forward. They exist to make concrete choices, with the right people in the room armed with the right information. Then, they end with clarity about what decisions were made and who is responsible for carrying them out.
Information meetings. Here, meetings are about sharing information. They’re often necessary but frequently overattended. Bloated. What could be communicated in an email becomes a meeting that lasts an hour. What could be five minutes of context becomes forty-five minutes of presentation.
Discussion meetings. These meetings explore ideas. They can be valuable for complex problems that need input from multiple perspectives. But, they can also become endless loops where the same points get made over and over, without any resolution.
Habit meetings. As you can guess, these meetings exist because, well, they always have. The weekly status report that nobody finds useful. The monthly review that went out of fashion two years ago. The standing Zoom call that everyone dreads but nobody says anything about.
Ready for some tough love?
Most meetings are habit meetings disguised as something else.
But the fix is not complicated. It’s just uncomfortable. Here are four suggestions.
1. Audit your recurring meetings. All of them. Ask what would happen if each one were eliminated. I’m guessing that for most of them, the honest answer would be “nothing much.”
2.Cut meeting times in half. This is a clear function of Parkinson’s Law. Usually, a thirty-minute meeting conducted efficiently can accomplish what an unruly sixty-minute meeting can.
3. Require a meeting agenda. Outline what needs to be discussed and the decisions that need to be made. If there’s nothing to decide, is there a reason to have this meeting?
4.Protect focused work time. The meetings that matter aren’t just the ones you attend. No, they’re the ones you don’t attend and the ones that prevent people from being productive.
Everyone complains about meetings. They all say that they have too many. But not everyone actually does something about it.
I challenge you to be the leader who audits meetings relentlessly. Who cuts habit meetings even when it feels uncomfortable. Who protects focused work time like the valuable resource it is.
That’s what separates organizations that execute with precision from those that just stay busy.