“Meetings don’t have to be endless to be eternal.”- James E. Faust

Meeting has always been one of the important and unavoidable part of our professional life but in most of the cases the sentiment on meeting has not been positive. Covid19 added to it further with sudden influx of virtual meetings which although became comfortable for people to connect anytime, anywhere but on the other hand in most of the cases it has become dreadful as meeting has entered our home and our personal lives which is hugely impacted. There are data which does reflect some shocking facts about meetings and seems it is hugely ineffective . See below

More than a third (34 percent) say they waste between 2-5 hours per week on calls or meetings that don’t accomplish anything.-Korn Ferry

If you’re a middle manager, it’s likely about 35% of your time, and if you’re in upper management, it can be a whopping 50%.-The Muse

According to a study by Bain & Company, organizations spend about 15% of their time in meetings

A whopping 37% of meetings are considered to be adding no value to the organization

Research shows that across the United States, meetings that are not even necessary waste over $25 million every single day, or about $37 billion every year.

We already know somewhere that meetings may not be effective either as Organizer or being the participant but few realize that how hugely this impacts our professional life . Mostly we start with good intention but gradually it fades down, But can we do anything? Can we make it consistently effective ? And the answer is of course yes and it has become much more important and urgent today to save time , money and thus be productive in this competitive environment.

Meeting can be the most powerful tool to translate strategy in to execution and ensure alignment

There are set of rules or in better word strategies which can make the meetings much more effective and can remove all waste of time making everything better. Lets see few of the very basics of them first which we know already but it needs one simple thing i.e. Discipline to make it happen.

Having a clear Purpose and objective of the meeting
Indicate what people need to do prior to meetings and the venue of the meeting
Assign responsibilities for people to do during the meetings

Assigned person to Track if the Goals of meetings are getting checked
Keeping the Track of time which is hugely important
Speak at the end of the meeting if all points have been covered and
Next action step assigning the responsibilities

It is critically important that how the actions steps are being communicated to further teams which is often missed and so everyone is not on the same page.
Getting the Job done as discussed in the meeting so that in the next meeting we can go a step ahead.

There is a very powerful framework which Verne Harnish Talks about in his book Scaling up and also Cameron Herold also mentioned in his book Meetings suck which may remove the need of most unwanted meeting. This Idea is about having Cadences of meetings which sounds increasing the no of meetings but it helps liberating other forms of adhoc meetings and other forms of multiple communications which tends to waste lot of time. All different cadences as shown below have different purpose with everything has its own place and if followed properly 80% of meeting and email communication goes away.

Daily Huddles – It is mainly about daily updates for very short time 5-7 minutes and best at standing position and having headline update for around a minute about mainly 3 things, what’s going on, Update on daily metric if there is any and one of the very important thing to update about what is the blocking point either within the Team or beyond so that it can be removed immediately for better functioning right away. It lets everyone to go for deep work as everything is clear for the day and they can wait for next day to discuss.

Weekly Action meetings – If the Daily meeting is regular and consistent then weekly meeting becomes very simple where there is no discussion about daily activities but just check as per the company quarterly priorities defined in quarterly meetings about what is done , celebrate about it and then what is not done to understand more about it to make it happen. This happens for 12 weeks .

Quarterly meetings– 13th week is for Quarterly meeting which is purely strategic in nature where all leadership teams are invited and there is no talk about execution or any daily activities which is done or not done but it is simply to update One page strategic plan and the main outcome of the meeting is updated one page plan which reflects overall direction and how we are going to measure in next quarter.

Monthly meeting (Optional) – This may or may not be required depending on if there is any issues which needs deep dive, some learnings and explaining some SOPs when required. This has its own value but purely adhoc basis.

While collaborating with Teams is extremely important and cant be avoided but if it is without clear Purpose and objective which is not well communicated , the same collaboration derail productivity and value of it becomes questionable so define the Purpose of the meetings to improve its efficacy.