Are meetings really helping to collaborate ?
Change the way meetings are organized in your company and
improve your profits by 20%. Many companies have elaborate policies on how
budget gets approved and how money gets spent but fewer companies consider time
as scarce resource and quantify the usage .
A recent survey showed that 20% of organisation time is going into meetings every year. However, very few of these meetings are productive. Where is time going ? Research shows that on an average, a senior manager spends two days in a week in meetings. Responding to survey these managers suggested that their meetings not always productive. A regular 90 min monthly meeting among middle level managers costs 15 million dollars. Who is responsible for approving this cost? On how many occasions did you, as an engineer, walk into a meeting not knowing anything about the meeting and walked out not having anything to work on. Many organizations consider time management as an individual responsibility. But, organization’s culture is a bigger than any individual. Organization time is
Number of meetings have increased but number of productive meetings have decreased. Advancement in technology reduced the cost and effort in organizing meetings. Literally anyone can call any employee in the organization for meetings. On an average, during a 30 meeting involving 5 people 21 mails are sent. Ineffective meetings are not helping anyone. So should we totally stop meetings? Meetings are part of our daily work day, and thus they can't be completely avoided but they should be improved. Meetings are meant to collaborate. According to research, number of 1-1 meetings and team meetings has tripled in the last one decade but meetings involving multiple business units did not increase. Even if there is an organization level meeting they are intended to communicate information rather than seek inputs from various teams to collaborate and come up with a strategy. Good meetings are those that happen involving different teams and foster diverse thinking.
A recent survey showed that 20% of organisation time is going into meetings every year. However, very few of these meetings are productive. Where is time going ? Research shows that on an average, a senior manager spends two days in a week in meetings. Responding to survey these managers suggested that their meetings not always productive. A regular 90 min monthly meeting among middle level managers costs 15 million dollars. Who is responsible for approving this cost? On how many occasions did you, as an engineer, walk into a meeting not knowing anything about the meeting and walked out not having anything to work on. Many organizations consider time management as an individual responsibility. But, organization’s culture is a bigger than any individual. Organization time is
Number of meetings have increased but number of productive meetings have decreased. Advancement in technology reduced the cost and effort in organizing meetings. Literally anyone can call any employee in the organization for meetings. On an average, during a 30 meeting involving 5 people 21 mails are sent. Ineffective meetings are not helping anyone. So should we totally stop meetings? Meetings are part of our daily work day, and thus they can't be completely avoided but they should be improved. Meetings are meant to collaborate. According to research, number of 1-1 meetings and team meetings has tripled in the last one decade but meetings involving multiple business units did not increase. Even if there is an organization level meeting they are intended to communicate information rather than seek inputs from various teams to collaborate and come up with a strategy. Good meetings are those that happen involving different teams and foster diverse thinking.
- How can you change organization culture, which is too big to be changed by anyone? Everyone can contribute to improvement.
- Always send agenda ahead of meetings and give action items post meetings.
- If you are a manager encourage conducting shorter meetings no more 30mins. Attention span reduces and number of email increase post this.
- Meetings should be set to take decisions. Foster decision making in meetings and give action items to execute.
- An hour of team meeting costs 200$ . Encourage employees to start looking from cost perspective. Make it meaningful.
- Avoid inviting people just because you like to have someone in the meeting. Call only right stakeholders to meeting.
