Guest post by Dr. Arlen Burger
When I survey people in organizations
about problems they encounter, invariably in the top five is too many meetings.
From many people’s perspective, the modern business meeting has evolved into an
artificial life form that is a profound waste of time and company resources.
Meetings have become a time to check your email, fall to sleep, check updates
on Facebook, gossip, play games, or get hypnotized by a progression of
PowerPoint slides and mind numbing data.
Leaders are expected to run good
meetings and ensure that the meetings in their organization are also run well.
If meetings are seen negatively, why don’t leaders do more to improve them? In
my experience, leaders don’t run meetings poorly on purpose. They may not have
had a lot of positive meeting models to use as reference or they may be facing
challenges that are complicated to address.
Addressing meeting problems is often
compounded by a much deeper issue, namely that meetings tend to be in synch
with the organizational culture. They are an extension of the culture. While a
leader has some impact on a work culture, the culture also possesses a life of
its own. Often the leader has to combat the culture itself to try and make
meetings more effective. People will generally comment about how bad meetings
are but also communicate a sense of helplessness in changing them. In my
experience, there are four different types of dysfunctional meeting cultures
that leaders need to be prepared to address.
The Inclusion
Culture
In this type of environment,
belonging to a group and being included are important values of the work
culture. The net result is that meeting membership is not managed and there are
often people in the meeting that really don’t need to be there. The inclusion
culture has a high frequency of social get-togethers and encourages interaction
outside of work. Social importance is tied to being included. If you are not at
a meeting you are viewed as being valued. An important function of meetings is
about determining social standing. For example, are you in the inner circle or
outside of it?
The Isolationist
Culture
On the opposite side of the spectrum
is the isolationist culture. In this type of culture, everyone is viewed as an
individual and is expected to focus on their own work. Interpersonal contact
and meetings are kept to a minimum, furthering the isolation of individuals.
The problem in the isolationist culture is not too many meetings but the lack
of them. This tendency leads to silos of information and lack of communication
between organizations.
The Talk it to
Death Culture
In the talk it to death culture the
main problem is that meetings are not effective and issues are not resolved.
This culture has propensities towards lack of accountability and an aversion to
risk or action. Meetings often are marathons lasting hours and can end without
clear next steps. Members leave with a great deal of frustration because
nothing was accomplished.
The Activity
Junkie Culture
In the activity junkie culture,
everyone is extremely busy. Meetings revolve around assigning action items.
Individuals always leave the meeting with more things on their plate. While the
idea of action items is a good one, the problems with the junkie culture are
that action items are not followed up on or there is a lack of prioritization.
These cultures don’t prioritize enough so people become quickly overloaded and
quality suffers. People are busy but they might not be working on the right
things.
Reducing the sheer number of meetings
and making them more effective is a challenge that leaders should think about
tackling directly because of how much productivity is lost.
I have identified 18 common problems
that contribute to a dysfunctional meeting culture and their solutions. Which
ones are occurring in your organization?
Problem #1: Poor
mechanics
The basics of good meeting practices
are not followed. The purpose of the meeting is not clear. The expected outcome
of the meeting is not clearly articulated. Minutes are not taken. Action items
are not followed up on. Materials are not sent out ahead of time so people come
into the meeting operating on different information.
Solutions: Institute basic meeting etiquette in all
of your meetings. Help reinforce meeting basics to be followed in other
meetings by participating and modeling the behaviors. Tie your participation to
the practices being followed. Have attendees grade the meeting effectiveness
and review these ratings on a regular basis.
Problem #2: The
leader doesn’t effectively exercise his/her role.
This relates to a failure of the
leader to do what they are supposed to do. They don’t keep conversations on
track, don’t avoid rat holes, don’t check to see that people are actively
engaged, and don’t close discussions at the appropriate time and move on to action.
The leader may also not be clear on whether they are leading or participating
which contributes to confusion among attendees on how to respond or treat the
leader.
Solutions: Make clear to the leader your
expectations of their role. Many leaders have not received good training on
meeting management and are doing what they have observed in other meetings.
Give them concrete and specific feedback on how to improve the meeting. Ask
them to send clear signals when they move between the roles of leader versus
participant.
Problem #3: The
leader tries to do everything
Managing a meeting means juggling
several very distinct activities. If the leader is trying to do all it
him/herself, there will always be something that doesn’t get done.
Solutions: Distribute important meeting functions
among attendees. You can assign certain roles such as note taker and time
manager to encourage participation.
Problem #4: No
test or criteria established for creating a meeting
As a consequence, anyone can create a
meeting about anything. There is no gate keeping. This is what I call the
meeting reflex. When a problem is encountered the first impulse is to call a
meeting. Lack of discipline in this area can lead to an explosion of meetings.
Solutions: Publish criteria for the establishment of
any meeting (i.e., requires a group action, can only be 30 minutes long). Set
up a meeting approval process and/or approval body that all proposed meetings
must go through to be ratified. Have people submit their proposed meetings for
approval. You can also limit meetings to certain days, have meeting free days,
or set a maximum limit of meetings per week.
Problem #5:
Meetings are a substitute for others things that are broken
Unclear or overlapping roles, broken
processes, or lack of accountability can all contribute to meeting overload.
Instead of fixing the core problem, we take the easy way around and set up a
meeting. We learn to navigate around the bumps in the road.
Solutions: Ask these simple questions to try and
identify the real problem. Are there problems between roles and
responsibilities? Are we dealing with a broken process such as decision-making?
Are people willing to take ownership and responsibility? Set up a work group or
team to start tackling the real issue once it is identified.
Problem #6:
Control not exercised over membership
People are in the meeting who really
don’t need to be there while others who should be present are not. As a
consequence, things don’t get resolved and more meetings are scheduled. A
related problem is that the membership keeps expanding until the meeting
becomes unwieldy and difficult to manage. A meeting beyond a certain size will
evolve into just an information exchange.
Solutions: Scrutinize the invitee list. Uninvite
attendees who shouldn’t be there. Ask attendees to justify their presence or
why they should attend. Invite people who need to be there and clearly explain
why. Keep the membership small when possible. An effective working meeting size
is 6-10 people. Beyond that range, plan to have meetings that are more
communication focused.
Problem #7:
Meetings have bad PR.
“Any meeting is a waste of time.
Can’t I just go do my work”? In this situation meetings have acquired a bad
reputation and are framed as a necessary evil rather than an important
mechanism for getting things done. People begrudgingly attend them, don’t
attend, or have low expectations. All meetings are seen in a negative light.
Solutions: Start a positive PR campaign about the benefits
of well-run meetings (i.e., better communication and alignment). Solicit
people’s thoughts on how to make meetings better rather than just their
complaints. Measure meeting performance and report the results.
Problem #8: Lack
of Choice
Meeting attendance refusal is not
sanctioned or there is no legitimate way for someone to opt out of a meeting.
Meetings are defined as mandatory. As a consequence, people feel coerced and
resent being there. They can demonstrate passive aggressive behavior.
Solutions: No one likes to feel forced. While some
mandatory meetings are unavoidable, keep them to a minimum. In the meetings,
try to give people as many choices as possible. For example, you could ask them
to vote if they’d like to adjourn early once the work is completed. Add other
rewarding activities to the meeting. Food, entertainment, games, and networking
time help change the environment.
Problem #9: Lack
of planning for disagreement
People show up at meetings with
different viewpoints, perspectives, and needs. When it is time for a decision
or closure, it is not surprising that many meetings get bogged down when
disagreement raises its head. Often, the leader is caught by surprise when this
happens and may not know what to do. They may try to force a decision, downplay
the disagreement, or let the meeting end without closure.
Solutions: Anticipate disagreement. Whenever you get
two people in the room you will get different viewpoints. Solicit viewpoints
ahead of time so that you can get a sense of where people stand. Send out a
brief communication before the meeting outlining the positions, pros and cons,
the need for the decision, and ask people to send you any other feedback they
would like to be included. Ask people to come prepared to make and support a decision,
and why the decision needs to be made at the meeting. Set up the agenda to
allow for additional discussion and how the decision will be made (i.e.,
majority, consensus etc.). Manage the meeting by raising the differences first
then moving on options and tradeoffs. Keep people on track and employ the
method for making the decision when the time is right.
Problem #10: Too
much focus on info sharing vs. decision making
With so much information to share, we
use meetings as a default way to get a critical mass of people together and
make sure they all have the same information. The sheer amount of information
we deal with encourages our use of meetings as an information conduit.
Unfortunately, these types of meetings engage people in a sequential manner. People’s
attention moves in and out depending on whether or not the information is
relevant to them. At any point in time there will be people checked out and
some people checked in.
Solutions: There are many better ways to share
information than meetings. SharePoint sites, wikis, blogs, or even web pages
can be used to distribute information in an effective and efficient manner. Use
them whenever possible.
Problem #11:
Blended agendas
People set up agendas that blend too
many different types of activity. One good example of this problem I see with
some regularity is when strategic and operational activities are part of the
same agenda. These types of activity require very different types of thinking
and pacing, and people often have a difficult time shifting from one mode to
the other.
Solutions: Try to break up meetings into different
types and have the agendas be consistent. If you are having a longer meeting,
break up the meeting into different segments and allow for transition time. For
example, when holding a strategy-focused meeting, organize the agenda around
break out time, time for brainstorming and open ended discussion. You might
focus only on a few points or issues to get people thinking creatively. This
type of meeting is very different from an operations review where you are
basically reviewing results and problems.
Problem: #12:
Unrealistic agendas
In this scenario, people set up
agendas that try to accomplish too much. The actual amount of time required to
do something is not calculated accurately and represents wishful thinking. The
results are unfinished agendas and meetings that chronically run over the
scheduled time.
Solutions: Solicit multiple viewpoints from
attendees before the meeting to get estimates of time needed per issue. Be sure
to recognize that different activities require different pacing. Scheduling a
brainstorming activity in a project review time frame won’t work. Manage the
allotted time slots aggressively. Identify people who consistently run over
time and coach them on how to manage their time more effectively. If you work
with a team over time you should be able to get a sense of the team’s pacing.
Set the agenda to their pace, not yours. Finally, you can cut the proposed
agenda in half. No one will complain about getting out early.
Problem #13:
Lack of awareness around the true cost of a meeting
If attendees are fellow employees,
their actual cost often gets taken for granted. We just don’t think about our
co-workers in terms of cost. We also labor under some false assumptions about
what the actual employee hourly cost is which contributes to inefficient use of
time. The result is that companies are wasting millions of dollars a year on
unproductive meetings.
Solutions: As a rule of thumb, most industries can
expect that for mid-level managers on up, adding 100% of their salary more
accurately reflects the true cost of an employee (Doerr, 12/09). Based on that
assumption, a $100,000 per year employee total costs are roughly $200,000 per
year or roughly $96.00 per hour (52 weeks times 40 hours per week =
2,080 hours per year. If you have 10 people in this salary range in a two hour
long meeting, you have just spent $1,920 worth of employee time. You can
tighten up the meeting discipline in your organization by utilizing a cost
calculator to measure the true cost of a meeting. Then evaluate whether or not
the agenda justifies its ROI. If the calculation is not a good investment,
either cancel the meeting or improve the agenda to increase its return.
Problem #14:
Attendee bad behavior
Not coming prepared, expecting to be
educated in the meeting, being disruptive, or expecting to being entertained
are all forms of attendee bad behavior. Managing a meeting is made much more
difficult when these types of behavior are present.
Solutions: Evaluate how these behaviors have come to
be tolerated. Determine what you are doing that may be contributing to the
behavior (i.e., not distributing information ahead of time so that people can
review it) and change it. Bring it to the attention of the individual
displaying the behavior that they are demonstrating ineffective behavior during
the actual meeting or immediately afterwards. Give them clear feedback on how
you want to see their behavior change. Attach consequences to the behavior to
encourage ownership and positive participation.
Problem #15:
Discipline degrades over time
What was once a well organized
meeting gets sloppier over time. People start taking short cuts and meeting
discipline gets worse. Meeting fatigue sets in and the leader has a harder time
getting people to attend. People increasingly question the purpose of the
meeting.
Solutions: This is a clear example of a meeting that
needs to be revitalized or stopped. If the issue that drove the initial
formation of the meeting is still active, look at refreshing the membership to
get new perspectives. Look at transferring the leadership of the meeting to
someone else. Holding periodic meeting check up audits to get feedback from
participants about the meetings purpose, how it is conducted, and how to make it
better will help the meeting maintain its momentum.
Problem #16:
Meetings take on a life of their own
We are good at starting meetings but
not ending them. They become a habit and their charter can creep into other
areas outside of the original scope. New members replace original members and
still the meeting chugs along. At some point it becomes difficult to remember
who started the meeting and what it was supposed to do. As a consequence,
meetings pile up like weight on dogsled, eventually decreasing productivity to
a dangerous level.
Solutions: I have found that two basic meeting
disciplines are useful in combating this problem. First, institute a rule that
basically says that for any meeting that is started another needs to be ended.
This will force people to be more discriminating about the meetings they start
and will put pressure on existing meetings to be useful. The second rule is
that every meeting needs to have an end/evaluation date. Don’t let meetings be
open ended, instead set a closure date at the very beginning. Manage the
meeting to that date. A meeting can always be reinstated if there is demand for
it. For meetings that are truly ongoing or mandated (i.e., safety, management
reviews) establish an evaluation date where the overall effectiveness of the
meeting is assessed. Be sure to evaluate the meetings at least yearly.
Problem #17:
Lack of continuity between meetings
Meetings are seen as isolated events
that are not connected to the flow of work. Conversations do not occur about
meeting themes between meetings.
Solutions: Meetings should be seen as part of an
overall conversation about an issue, not as the only place where discussions
about the issue take place. As you manage the meeting think about activities
and actions you can encourage members to engage in between the meetings. Assign
actions, create homework, set up informal gatherings with subsets of the
membership, and post communications about meeting activities as they are
completed. Encourage members to interact directly to solve issues rather than
waiting for the meeting to solve them.
Problem #18: No
transit time allowed between meetings
When back to back meetings get
scheduled there is often no time allowed for getting to your next meeting on
time. The problem snowballs as the day progresses and you get progressively
later. Meetings towards the end of the day end up having the worst attendance
problem as a result. In part this is a problem due to scheduling software
(i.e., Outlook®), that only allows things to be scheduled on the hour or half
hour.
Solutions: One very simple way of dealing with this
problem is to set all meetings to a 50 minute hour cycle. This allows for
transit and transition time.
The ultimate goal for a leader to
have regarding meetings is that they are seen as useful, productive, and
engaging. By making sure people see that their time is respected and valued,
and tangible results occur, the leader creates an environment where people want
to attend meetings, not dread them.
About
Dr.
