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
