Issue #205 - Special Edition: Stop the Meeting Madness!

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Note: I’ve received so many requests for help with reducing the number of meetings and enhancing the quality of the meetings that you do have, that I created an entire issue on this topic. So, for this week, I’ll forego the usual INSIGHTS, IMPERFECTIONS, and IMPLEMENTATION sections. 

They’re the elephant in the conference room; the thing we love to hate but hate not knowing how to fix. Meetings. And their negative impact has been linked to poor marketplace performance, declining employee retention, dramatically lower job satisfaction/happiness, and a devastating hit to productivity, to name just a few side effects. 

But you already knew all of this if you’ve ever read Dilbert. 

So we don’t need to meet to discuss this - it’s time for an intervention. I aimed to avoid clichéd advice and instead concentrated on research-backed, highly effective guidance that you may not have encountered before on how to stop the meeting mania.

TREAT THE INTERVENTION ON MEETINGS LIKE A NEW PRODUCT INITIATIVE

I’m sorry, but, you have almost no chance of changing the meeting culture in your workplace on your own. It requires team-wide awareness and effort. It starts with gaining agreement from the team leader (or agreeing with yourself if that’s you) that things can be done much better, and then elevating the concept of a meeting overhaul to the same status as a new product initiative. Assign a team leader for the initiative, identify the necessary resources, implement incentive systems, and set clear objectives and goals with the entire team. Approach it with the mindset that this initiative may be one of the most powerful ways to positively impact both the top and bottom lines – because it is.

QUESTION THE EXISTENCE OF MEETINGS

It’s important to begin by enrolling the entire team in this effort (as stated above); otherwise, any of the advice that follows will be susceptible to office politics and the typical expectation of attending meetings x, y, z. Consider this guidance as a way to channel the team's energy in this effort:

1. No meaning, no meeting.

OK, I admit this one is on the more obvious side of advice, but it’s too important to overlook. Whether you’re a meeting requester or attendee, never stop asking what the point of the meeting is and whether it is meaningful. If it’s not, no meeting. Be brutal. Research indicates that meetings that truly matter to employees are those where a) substantial decisions are made, b) strategies and priorities are agreed upon, c) important multi-functional planning takes place, and d) resources are allocated. Period. 

2. Create solves for misguided meetings. 

Many poor reasons exist for meetings to occur, yet they still happen. Your team needs to be completely open and honest about the misguided reasons behind meetings and then develop alternatives to those meetings. Here are the biggest offenders and corresponding solves:

• Standing meetings – By this, I mean regularly scheduled meetings that occur like clockwork and may have even existed long before anyone can remember. If you’re struggling to determine whether the meeting is necessary, try this test from change expert Ron Carucci: ask your team, “If we stopped this meeting, who would care?” If they struggle to respond, you have your answer. The alternative I’m proposing is to seriously examine every standing meeting to determine if it’s truly necessary.

• Informational meetings – Nope. Updates are not a reason to meet. Inform stakeholders via email (see the “Town Hall” exception below).

• Process meetings – Are you holding meetings to advance some mundane company process? Don’t do it. If necessary, revisit the process itself to make it less reliant on meetings for progress. In one of my corporate roles, we were falling victim to an innovation process that required multiple meetings at every step – a series of meetings to advance the project from the idea stage to securing resources, then to test market, then moving it to full resourcing, then launching, and so on. We stepped back and revamped the innovation process, reducing the number of checkpoints and eliminating 80 percent of the meetings associated with the remaining ones. People began to look forward to the upcoming innovation process meetings because they were genuinely meaty and meaningful.   

• “Status theater” meetings – This one takes bravery. It is undeniable that meetings provide the opportunity to showcase one’s talents or to exercise one’s power and status in the theater of the executive stage (and some are quite skilled at “acting it up”). However, the leader must also recognize that their power and status will increase if they provide their teams with the gift of a radically changed meeting culture. The team must proactively provide alternative methods to give team members exposure, such as regularly showcasing accomplishments through a newsletter or at important town hall meetings.

• Town Hall or “All-hands” meetings – I want to be careful here. Well-planned meetings that bring everyone together can be effective, provided they are held within a culture that openly embraces a transformation of meeting practices, and as long as they are not too frequent. By nature, these meetings are often informational and inspirational, which is great, as long as the information is critical and provided with an important perspective that is best shared face-to-face, and as long as the inspirational portions are well executed. 

• Relationship building meetings – It’s noble to hold meetings for the purpose of fostering camaraderie and collaboration, but research indicates that, in fact, 62 percent of executives believe that meetings do not bring teams closer together. You foster closer team dynamics by facilitating more informal connections and fewer, yet more impactful, meetings that promote engaged behavior and visibly guide the entire team toward a common goal. 

3. Begin the weaning process.

Research indicates the effectiveness of setting aside time periods like “No Meeting Fridays” to help people adjust to life with fewer meetings. The key is to ensure that the time originally allocated for meetings is utilized for “think” time, and to prevent sleeper cells of mini-meetings from arising everywhere. I once had a leader who instituted “No Meeting Fridays” and then walked the floors to ensure that such mini-meetings weren’t happening. It was liberating. 

QUESTION THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MEETINGS

Nobody said meetings couldn’t be highly productive -- it just takes some intentionality:

1. Create a reverse charter.

Having a clear charter is classic meeting advice: start with the team's purpose, why it’s meeting, what it aims to accomplish, and make sure the scope is specific, narrow, and clear. That’s good advice (even if generic). However, an increasing number of studies indicate that it’s even more powerful to start with what’s called a “reverse charter” - what are all the things the team doesn’t exist to do and won’t cover in meetings? This helps teams avoid traps and time-wasting distractions in meetings that many teams often encounter. So your team is not a decision-making body, but rather exists to plan and execute? Place that in the reverse charter and then make sure no one behaves as if they’re a decision maker. Need your team to stay focused on making tough calls? Write it down on paper, then allow more meeting time for discussion and debate while eliminating any informational updates. You get the idea. 

2. Think see versus cc:

This is about meeting composition - Who needs to be there and who doesn’t? Do you need to see a person at the meeting, or can you cc: them on what happened? That’s it. These are the two groups for consideration, no in-betweens. People warrant attendance when they have something particular to contribute. If they are merely stakeholders in the outcome of the meeting, then they can be informed afterward. Keep in mind that this opposes the leader's default expectation of attendance. In fact, one particularly effective leader I had would go around the room before a meeting started and ask each person, “Why are you here?” If they didn’t have something specific to contribute, they were politely “freed up.” Contrast this with a particularly ineffective leader I once had who would ask, “Why isn’t so-and-so here?” It was a question born out of habit and a desire for “status theater.”

3. Appoint a meeting maestro.

This is for standing meetings that make the cut. The idea is to assign one team member the job of running the meeting for maximum effectiveness. Think of them as you would an initiative leader, clearly outlining their duties, incentivizing them, and rewarding their creativity in organizing better meetings. One meeting maestro executive shared an idea with me about installing a badge scanner at the front of the conference room to track how long each person attended a meeting. Working with HR, he loaded in salary data to determine (based on time and attendance) how much the meeting cost. It dramatically elevated a sense of accountability to stay on track.

The maestro’s core responsibilities should include keeping meetings on time and on topic (on topic by halting sidetrack conversations and putting them in the “parking lot,” and on time by cutting off pontificators and starting and stopping each segment punctually). They should also establish clear agendas, meeting objectives, and next steps, while ensuring that pre-work is submitted, read, and acted upon promptly.  

4. Ban devices during meetings.

Scary thought, no? Simply put, studies reveal a remarkable effect on meeting effectiveness when devices are prohibited during meetings. The ban should include people who take notes on their computers. Go old school in note-taking - you’ll survive. And it’s critical that this starts with the leader. Research shows that if a boss multitasks or uses devices during a meeting, it increases the likelihood that others in the meeting will multitask by over 200 percent.

5. Don’t bet on gimmicks. 

Research shows that gimmicky tactics, such as stand-up meetings or holding meetings in rooms with the temperature set extremely low (yes, that’s a thing), don’t work in the long run. Focus on brutally eliminating unnecessary meetings and managing the ones that remain with careful attention.

6. Press for accountability and closure.

P.K. Shaw once said, “A meeting consists of a group of people who have little to say - until after the meeting.” Funny? Yes. True? Oh, yes. Cool? No, not cool. Meetings after the meeting frequently contribute to the already overburdened meeting culture. Everyone at a meeting— not just the meeting maestro - must play a role in encouraging attendees to voice their opinions, be accountable for what they claim they will do or what is assigned to them, and engage in debate, decision-making, and commitment. Closure isn’t just for surgical wounds.

By the way, don’t forget the best sentence, ever, for effective closure (I shared it in the intro to this post): “Who’ll do what by when?”

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