I once was on a project where we had an hour and a half meeting EVERY SINGLE DAY to update everyone on how the rest of the team was doing.
Nice thought, but pretty f*cking stupid, because I’d get out of there and my brain cells would be wasted, half falling asleep in a meeting, and dull for the rest of the day.
A good part of the productive morning (for me), totally wasted.
A meeting every day?
Seriously?
I kept wanting to skip the meeting to see if they’d miss me, but I was heading a division so… I couldn’t exactly nip off for a nap.
My new proposal
Why do we have meetings?
This may sound impossible, but if you have a meeting it’s for 2 things:
- To make a decision
- To inform people
In both cases, you want or are asking for feedback, which will lead to action on somebody’s part, either to adjust what you’ve just presented, or the parties involved will carry out the actions from the meeting.
If you aren’t doing either, then what’s the point?
If you just want to inform people that things are going fine in marketing, then send an email and if they’re interested, they’ll read it and it’s the same in meetings, so why are you wasting time gathering everyone together physically?
Meeting does not mean Managing
For managers out there, meetings are not managing. “Meeting” is the key word here, not “Managing”. By gathering people together for an hour every morning to chat, it is NOT managing. It is MEETING.
It is not your job to babysit them to MAKE SURE that they are aware of the situation.
It is THEIR job to process that information and to keep alert at all times so that they can execute their daily tasks correctly.
If they don’t read their emails, they’ll learn soon enough that you don’t call for meetings just for the hell of it. That when you call a meeting, you mean it and they’ll show up. And if you email them (don’t email them every hour), it’s an important email.
*Any exceptions to 15 minutes or less?
Of course. If you are gathering for a decision that involves a number of parties, you clearly cannot solve something in 15 minutes. What you can do, is increase that to half an hour, to an hour, depending on the complexity of the problem.
Each party must be informed ahead of time when and what the meeting is about, and come prepared. If they are not prepared, you cut the meeting short and meet at a time when both parties can talk intelligently about what’s going on.
I believe half an hour to an hour (maybe) is enough for a major decision, because what happens in meetings most of the time (from my experience) is people say one point, and then it gets repeated like a broken record for the entire meeting. Everyone wants to chime in on the same point with different perspectives.
That is NOT productive. Get the point from one person, jot it down, move on. If someone else tries to bring it up again, say it’s already on the list. Move on.
Or, if you really want to work on the problem all day, make the teams sit in one room together and as they each work independently, they can call out questions or inform the other party right away instead of having to attend a meeting to give an update.
Who to invite?
Only invite the people who are going to do the actual work, or take action on what the decision is.
Don’t invite people who just want to know what’s going on. They’re useless to the meeting and will probably bog the process down. Inform them later of what the decision is, and get feedback if you wish.
Everyone must be on time
This doesn’t work if Lisa from Marketing wanders in 5 minutes late to a 15 minute meeting, holding a cup of Starbucks in her hand because she left to get REAL coffee.
Everyone, must be on time. And if they’re not, they miss the meeting and have to get the information second-hand.
If they feel slighted, it is not your problem. You set the time for the meeting and if it was that important, they’d have been there.
With that being said, don’t set meetings for 7 a.m. Be reasonable considering the traffic in your city and the normal working hours of a day.
Oh, and don’t be late, yourself.
Agenda & Follow-Up Email
It is also the person’s job (who is hosting the meeting) to set an agenda of what they are going to cover in 15 minutes, and to send a follow-up email of the actions he/she has noted down to let everyone know what they have to get done.
This is not a sign for people to NOT take notes during a meeting. If you don’t come with a notepad and pen, and you don’t jot down important information, don’t expect it to be in the email, other than the noted action items.
Oh but what a dream world.
Anyone else think this is possible?
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I've been working as a consultant for a nonprofit for the past few months, and I've tried to do this with every meeting that I've had. People actually thank me for it. š
3 days a week we have a one hour meeting, occasionally lasting as long as one and a half hours. With an average of 8 people attending X rough salary per person $40/hour = $320 per meeting. Three days a week. Generally, in my opinion, a 5 minute here's the scoop would work – even just in e-mail.
I frickin hate meetings. Nothing EVER gets done or resolved at any of ours.
I have heard that one solution is to have 'stand up meetings' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting) so that everyone is standing during the meeting. Helps to keep people awake and keep the meeting brief.
Ooh yes! At my old job, we had daily "standups" – which literally were short syncups where you had to stand up. We'd just go around and briefly say what we we did/are going to be doing. Just so everyone's on the same page, and if someone's on the wrong track, someone can speak up. Granted, sometimes it would run long if discussions ensued, but usually someone would say "ok let's take this offline" and they'd continue the conversation elsewhere. It worked pretty well.
At my last job we did the meet every day thing for a while, until we all basically schemed to get out of them because you're right, it interrupted our productivity and just ended up with us having less hours to get our jobs done! In my current job, we have at least one full day per week is taken up by meetings, and they're mostly over 2 days, so those 2 days are basically throw-aways because I don't have much time at my desk actually working! It's a bit ridiculous, I agree.
Kudos on explicating how meetings should go down. In my line of work, we have "team meetings" because each practitioner works for different clinics/companies, but we all serve the same client. I see communication as an essential element of client care, but I swear, these things are a huge time suck and of little value much of the time.
I worked with someone years ago who wanted to invent a "meeting-o-meter" that would input everyone's hourly rate (according to their salary) and would calculate exactly how much the meeting was costing in real time. Think of a billboard at a telethon-the money would keep racking up the more people blathered on. She thought it might give people awareness that these things should be kept short, sweet and action oriented. I still long for that invention as I sit in 3 hour team meetings!
I'd like to work in this company!
Luckily I'm down to 2 status type meetings a week, with one being half technical. But a lot of meetings end up being a huge waste of time, and the convention is to show up 5 minutes late. Ug.