In Search of the Perfect Meeting

We all know that time is in short supply. That’s why you have to make every meeting pay off. Here are strategies for making good meetings better.

by Tom Krattenmaker Harvard Business School Working Knowledge

Terrence, the communications director of a health services company, grumbles about all the meetings he attends. When asked his job title, he quips: "Professional meeting attender." The meetings strain has grown worse since staff cuts increased his workload and that of his reports. Yet when the senior management team made a decision on his turf, Terrence was furious about not being invited to the meeting at which the matter was discussed.

His behavior is not as inconsistent as it may appear. Terrence’s problem with meetings is that most he attends are inefficient, unfocused time drains. Worse yet is that the meetings where the company’s real business gets accomplished are not managed with sufficient skill to ensure that the right players are there.

Terrence’s dilemma is a common one. At a time when changes in the workplace are increasing the number of meetings held, time-starved managers and their staff members—some of them performing work once handled by two people—can afford less than ever to waste their time in meetings.

"The biggest complaints I hear about meetings are that they’re unproductive, that they last too long, that they’re unnecessary," says Frances A. Micale, an Atlanta-based consultant and trainer, and the author of Not Another Meeting! A Practical Guide for Facilitating Effective Meetings (Oasis, 2002).

"Yet at their best, meetings can mean everything to an organization," she says. "If you can consistently have good, productive meetings, your company is going to perform better. I don’t think a lot of people think of it this way, but better meetings mean better communication and better decisions, and that’s going to have a direct impact on the bottom line."

The value—and the cost—of meetings

If you think you and your colleagues are attending more meetings than ever before, it’s probably not your imagination. In the old command-and-control days, people did not need to gather in meeting rooms that often. But as the workplace has become more collaborative and democratic, experts say, organizations have needed more meetings to share information, receive people’s input, and make group decisions. Moreover, mergers and alliances have increased the need for more interorganization meetings in addition to those taking place within companies.

But while meetings "at their best" can make crucial contributions to your company’s success, keep in mind that meetings at their worst represent not only a lost opportunity but also wasted money. Time is finite; when one factors in the hours employees fritter away at meetings instead of using the time to complete work at their desks and in the field, companies are wasting enormous amounts of money.

The Web site http://www.EffectiveMeetings.com, operated by the Calgary-based SMART Technologies, offers a meetings cost calculator that can help you determine the cost of meetings based on a set of variables. For example, the typical weekly management team meeting can cost a work group $390 each time it assembles—or more than $20,000 a year—assuming that the group consists of five members averaging $70,000 a year in salary and that the meetings last about two hours. Add to that dollar amount the toll taken by the accumulated stress and discontent of staffers who return from back-to-back-to-back meetings to an avalanche of messages and a deferred to-do list that grows by the day.

"I have clients telling me they are completely overwhelmed by this ‘meeting mania’ happening at many companies," says Peggy Klaus, a consultant in Berkeley, Calif. "In this new meeting culture, managers sometimes feel they have to hear everyone’s input before they make a decision. But it can become such a time drain that it’s ridiculous."

Here are some practical ideas for managers intent on having meetings that enhance, rather than hinder, their organization’s success.

Don’t always have a meeting

The solution to an unproductive meeting might be as simple as not having it. As Klaus and other experts explain, "meeting mania" is fueled in large part by the use of meetings to take care of business better handled by other means. Before calling the troops together yet again, managers should ask themselves whether the purpose of the meeting might be fulfilled some other way. If the point is to share information—which is all too frequently the case in organizations plagued by bad meetings—e-mail, memos, and informal conversations will probably work better.

"The question is: Why have a meeting? Most people don’t think through that clearly enough," says Barbara Streibel, a consultant at Oriel, based in Madison, Wisc., and author of The Manager’s Guide to Effective Meetings (McGraw-Hill, 2002). "The best reason to have a meeting is that you really need interaction between the people who are attending. You need people to share opinions and knowledge, and build a common integrated thought-line about the issue at hand. Then a meeting—if done well—is perfect for that."

In a few cases, information sharing might also be a legitimate purpose for scheduling a meeting, says Streibel—but only if you need the immediate spontaneous give-and-take that’s possible when everyone is together in real time. Otherwise, e-mail or voicemail will probably suffice.

Sometimes, curing "meeting mania" requires a shift in how you approach management, Klaus says. While a more democratic workplace is no doubt better for everyone, it does not mean that group decisions are required for all the small questions that make up a day. Micromanagers who want to vet their reports’ every move are going to need more meetings. On the other hand, effectively delegating work to qualified staff members greatly relieves the need for meetings. "If I have delegated well, I won’t need to be there for every decision the team is making. I’ll know that Tom or Susan has taken care of things," Klaus says.

"Before calling a meeting, you’ve really got to ask yourself, ‘What is the point?’" says Klaus. "What is it that, when you’re done, you want people to do or think or feel? Ask yourself: ‘Do I really have to have this meeting?’"

Don’t "discuss"

"Discussion" is no longer good enough. Time-starved staffs need more than directionless chatter or meant-to-impress progress reports. Productive meetings depend on clearly defined objectives toward which people can work and against which they can measure progress. "If I’m organizing a meeting, I want to get beyond ‘discuss,’" Streibel says. "Maybe ‘discuss and decide.’ Or ‘discuss and build a plan,’ or ‘discuss and identify key barriers to success.’ I want an action. I don’t need a laundry list of what’s happened in the last week."

For example, if your weekly get-together with your staff members has become the bane of your existence and theirs, insist that everyone—yourself included—pares down her reports to actionable issues. Reserve the meeting "table" for items that require the whole group’s thinking and action.

Spend time to save time

Terrence from the example above would not have missed the one meeting he did care about—and where his presence would have been most beneficial—if his company better prepared for and communicated about meetings. If the president’s executive assistant had thought through and prepared a good agenda for the weekly senior staff meeting, it might have occurred to her that a wise decision on the proposed community newsletter would require Terrence’s presence. (It turns out he had cost figures and survey results that would have compelled the opposite decision.)

Even if she had forgotten to invite Terrence, if she routinely circulated the agenda in advance to all managers, Terrence would have known what was coming. Then he could have lobbied to join the meeting, or at least sent an e-mail to his boss with the vital information.

As a rule of thumb, Streibel suggests spending thirty to sixty minutes preparing for meetings you are responsible for organizing and/or leading. Distribute a precise, time-conscious agenda and assemble the right people. And allow participants to depart when the meeting turns to affairs not relevant to their portfolios.

Thorough advance work can produce a surprising, and welcome, decision. "By identifying the desired outcome and preparing an agenda ahead of time," the trainer and consultant Micale says, "you may realize you don’t even need a meeting."

Park digressions, deflate windbags

Effective meeting facilitation is a subject unto itself, but experts point to several simple concepts that will make meetings as productive—and brief—as possible. A driver who meanders off course will take longer to reach his destination than one who heads directly from A to B. The same applies to meetings, which often take far longer than necessary because participants digress.

Klaus and other experts suggest one useful and diplomatic way of steering the meeting quickly back on course without hurting any feelings: Deal with off-topic ideas by placing them in a "parking lot"—a real or figurative white board listing thoughts and ideas that can be pursued (or not) at a more appropriate time.

Pontificators and windbags can also sabotage a meeting’s success even if they stay on agenda. Not only do they eat up time but they also can crowd out less loquacious participants who may have the best ideas. Polite interruptions by the meeting leader might be necessary to cut wordy monologues short. That, when combined with prompts to reluctant speakers, can keep everyone involved, which can only mean a better meeting.

At some meetings, everyone seems to want five or ten minutes of marginally worthwhile airtime, Streibel notes. If that’s the custom at your meetings, break people of the habit. "If you indulge them all and you have ten people at a meeting," Streibel says, "you’ve just blown at least an hour."
Declare a meeting-free day
Some companies are declaring meeting-free days. Others are making certain hours of the day off-limits for meetings. At some organizations, meetings creep is being fought through use of "stand-ups"—brief huddles where participants work through lean-mean agendas in rapid-fire fashion, literally standing up all the while to remind one another that the meeting is no time to lean back and settle in.

Streibel’s advice: Use meetings sparingly, and use them well. "I know people often feel that meetings are a waste of time," she says. "But when meetings are at their best, they’re a place where people can be creative together, where they can integrate everyone’s perspective and knowledge and experience. So they can be an important part of a process of coming up with innovative solutions to problems and new and better ways of doing things. Who wouldn’t want that?"

Reprinted with permission from "How to Make Every Meeting Matter," Harvard Management Communication Letter, May 2003.

Tom Krattenmaker is a freelance writer and director of news and information at Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia.

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