Meetings are a Must?

Meetings are a Must?                                                                    

When I conduct my workshops on ‘Time Management’ and ask the participants to list down the top 10 time wasters. Invariably, there is a mention of meetings and meetings as one of the top ranking time wasters. And as employees go up the seniority ladder in the organization, this monster called ‘MEETINGS’ eats away more and more of their time.  In all such cases, employees find themselves busy all the day. There is a lot of activity but accomplishment is probably meager and that leaves them dissatisfied at the end of the day.

Majority of you, who are reading this small article, must be thinking, ‘Yea! There have been umpteen number of times when I have sat through a meeting and said to myself, “what a waste of time yaar!, I could have done something better!”  But then the meeting was called by the boss himself. And you had little role to play in what was being discussed. During most of the meeting time, you are a mute spectator. You do contribute when Samosa and Tea/Coffee arrives ;-)

Meetings are in fashion. Any minor issue comes up, the boss calls the secretary ‘Call a Meeting’. According to me this is a global epidemic that is killing hours and hours of highly productive people by minutes and minutes. For the manager level employees, 40 to 50% of the time getting wasted in meetings is quite common and that leaves very little time for the actual work that needs to be done and that is most important for the growth of the company and even its survival. Let me hasten to add here that exceptions are always there. And if you as an individual or your organization is an exception, my heartiest congratulations to you and you may even stop reading here itself so that you don’t waste your further time in reading a few more irrelevant lines ;-) and instead just forward it to your friends who are the likely victims of this monster.

The question now arises that do we have a solution? And the good news is that there is a solution. Though there is no single formula or one shot doze for this malady but despite meetings being indispensable  it is possible to drastically reduce the time being wasted in meetings and use the same time constructively for the growth of your organization and for improving the quality of your life as a person and as a family person.

You must have observed that normally meetings expand to fill the time available for the meeting. If you set an hour for the meeting, people will use that full one hour regardless of the agenda and many times meetings are extended by a few minutes just because tea and snacks got delayed, though all the points as per the agenda were over ;-). So the important point here is that if you are the culprit, calling the meeting, ask yourself at least five times if the meeting is a must. Can it be avoided? Possibly, you can just call your deputy and sort out the matter face to face in may be 15 minutes and even take the opinion of another guy in between on phone on some tricky issue.

Once we start asking ourselves these questions like ‘Is this meeting a must?’ ‘Can a phone call to one or two persons sort out the issue?’ ‘Can I just get up and go to the adjoining cubicle for a quick clarification and even to the department in the next building to kill the issue?’, you will realize that the number of meetings will start reducing in your organization. And I assure you that you shall be able to reduce the number of meetings by almost 50%.

The regular ‘Status Update Meetings’ or ‘Briefing by the Boss or for the Boss’  waste a lot of valuable time, and majority of the people complain  that these meetings don’t help them get any work done. The junior people in the hierarchy spend a lot of time in preparing these briefs and status reports for the big boss. A large number of people remain busy for preparing for the next status update meeting/briefing. What a waste of time? Despite having the so called - ‘On Line Monitoring Systems’.

Long project meetings with duration of three or four hours at a stretch or sometimes even for the full day become boring and at times become counterproductive. The energy of the participants gets depleted, and they may make bad decisions or choices. While the outcome of all the business meetings should lead to commitment, focus and sound decisions by the participants. Official meetings should not be used as a platform for networking.

Have a meeting only if it is must. Sometimes you need a body of a lot many HODs to support a decision that has already been made. Do not use the platform of meetings with such large number of participants to make decisions. Let one person give a brief presentation about the problem and the plan of action that has already been discussed in detail at the lower levels and briefed to the concerned persons in one to one discussions. Just get a stamp of formal approval in this meeting and move ahead.

By now, we feel that 100% elimination of meetings is not possible and that is perfectly right but elimination of useless meetings to a large extent should be possible. We must also ensure that all meetings that are eventually held are fully productive and participants feel enlightened and delighted at the end of the meeting that it was time well spent. Here are the tips to manage the meetings in a more productive manner:

·Have Agenda. Never call a meeting without agenda.

·Invite only those who can contribute to the solution of the problem.

·People should come prepared for the meeting as per the agenda otherwise they are wasting their time and other’s time also.

·Always start the meeting dot on time. In order to send a message of concern for punctuality, the meeting starting time can be 4:27 pm instead of 4:30 pm

·The person calling the meeting him/herself should be absolutely punctual and then s/he gets the authority to tick the latecomers.

·Mobile phones should be in silent mode. Laptop can be used only by the person noting the minutes of the meeting directly on the laptop.

·Sometimes the participants have to use the laptops for sharing information that is being discussed in the meetings or project their part on the projector system for all to see.

·If the meeting is related to an ongoing big issue, the minutes of the last meeting should be read, action completed/not completed should be conveyed to those attending and then proceed.

·Meetings should be as short as possible even 15 or 10 minutes or in some cases 5 minutes too. Approximate duration of the meeting should be intimated along with the agenda. So the ending time is known to all. 

·Meetings should never be extended for tea and snacks to arrive. These arrangements should me made well in advance by the support staff.

·The person chairing the meeting should guide the entire meeting as per the agenda and shouldn’t allow any individual to hijack, divert or dominate meeting by frequent and endless conversation or interruption.

·The chairperson should ensure that someone is noting the minutes of the meeting and action points are assigned to some individuals with expected date of completion of those jobs.

·As the chairperson, you can always end a meeting a bit early if all the points have been discussed.

·The formal meetings should be held only for serious issues and therefore minutes should be formally sent to all concerned not later than 24 hours after completion of the meeting.

Saying ‘Total No’ to meetings is definitely not possible. They have their own importance and should be held whenever there is a need. But meetings for the sake of just meeting people or to discuss trivial issues need to be totally discouraged. And if the meetings are organized in a total professional manner following the tips given above, the organizations will save a lot of time and energy of its people and their efficiency and effectiveness will improve, leading to Business Excellence and therefore higher productivity and profitability.

Veerendra Jaitly

jaitly.iit@gmail.com