- As per salary.com, 47% employee see meetings are unproductive, biggest time waster and distraction at work
- 63 % of meetings didn’t have a planned agenda.
- 73% do other work during meetings
Poorly managed meetings have been called the black holes of the workday and can weaken your company’s productivity. According to a worldwide study conducted by Microsoft Corporation, business people spend nearly six hours a week in meetings and nearly 70% of the participants reported that their meetings were unproductive.
Why meetings are unproductive?
- Too many participants. Many people do not know why they called in meeting.
- Lack of agenda
- There is no time limit
- lack of preparation by members. Participants zoning out because they’ve lost interest
- Participants routinely arrive late, stare at their smart phones, aren’t taking notes or working on their laptop for other activity, social media, sleeping, hearing but not listening
- Tons of frustration.
Outcome of poor meetings
- Increase Company’s direct cost. Cost = $ per Man hour x no of people x no of unproductive hours.
Meetings can be one of the biggest time drains for you as an individual and for a business. A 2 hrs meeting with 10 people all making $10 per hour costs a business $200. If meeting is a twice-per-week, and there are 30 minutes wasted in each meeting, the total yearly waste comes to nearly $5,000.
Value will increase with number of participants, un productive duration and frequency of meetings.
- Increase Company’s indirect cost. Unwanted meeting delay regular activity of employees and force them to stretch to complete targeted tasks. It impacts productivity of the employee. Overall, it impacts on employee morale and teamwork.
If this is a case within your company, your company has some improvements to make.
Meetings are very important and heart of any business.
Meetings if correctly conducted –
- Increases revenue.
- Achieve customer delight.
- Get employee buy in.
- Increase employee engagement.
- Provide role clarity and responsibility.
- Define clear action points.
- Meetings are empowering.
- Meetings are a great way to communicate.
- Meetings develop work skills and leadership.
- Meetings are morale boosting.
Overall effective meeting give direction to problem or issue or task or project or company.
So following are the effective ways to conduct meeting. Let us go step by step. Every step is important. See till end. At last I will give bonus tips to make your meeting further effective. Let us begin
11 Steps to conduct effective meetings.
- Ask yourself Question – is this meeting really necessary?
Before planning meeting, ask question to yourself. Why is this meeting required?
A lot of meetings really don’t need to be meetings at all. It’s possible that a conference call, group email, conversation, or memo would do the trick.
Meeting is very much required if you want to brain storm ideas, looking for solution to problem, decision making, project planning, goal setting, project reviews etc..
Avoid status update meeting. It can be done very well by simply sending mail in a group or one to one briefing to key person if required.
- Inform agenda well in advance
Once you decide that meeting is required, clear agenda / objective of the meeting, reference material along with schedule intimation to be sent to all the participants well in advance.
Send out an agenda in advance so that participants can be fully prepared. Be sure it’s action oriented. Some of the agenda points should be in the form of questions. This forces participants to do some preparatory work before scheduled meeting.
- Invite right people
As one of the most successful companies in the world, Google teach us to limit the number of attendees you invite to your meeting.
Google is famous for allowing no more than 10 people at a meeting.
Meeting should always have specific people who are responsible for the projects. These ‘directly responsible individuals’ (DRI) are key people in the meeting room.
By limiting attendees and only inviting key people, you ensure that your meeting stays structured and you achieve the outcome you want.
Also there might be people who should attend the meeting to give their input but don’t need to stay for the decision-making.
You can allow these attendees to leave after they’ve presented their points to the group and their presence is no longer required.
You might have people in your organization who don’t need to be present at the meeting, but still need to be updated about the outcomes.
To keep these people in the loop, simply send them a memo before and after your meeting to keep everyone on track.
- Pre-wiring with key stake holders
Some participants are key people in the meeting. Alignment or collaboration with these key people before actual meeting is very important to conduct successful meeting. Input and suggestions of these people help to conduct effective meeting.
This shall also help in saving others time during actual meeting.
- Start meeting on time
Time is Money
Meeting co-coordinator to ensure that meeting starts on time.
Email everyone to remind them a few minutes before the meeting starts. Personal call to some key people as required.
Key people to go 15 min early in meeting room to open soft files of agenda and all keys items to be discussed in meeting.
Go ahead and start the meeting without everyone. When someone comes late, ask him/her to catch up with someone else in the group to find out what they missed.
Hold the meeting somewhere that being late will make them look bad or at least be more noticeable.
Ask people to come on time. Depending on your role, this might be as simple as making a request, or a bit more strict, like pointing out that they are being rude to everyone else who came on time.
This habit is very important to change meeting culture of the organization.
- Set context before start of meeting
Agenda is already communicated to all participants in advance. Meeting facilitator to set context of the meeting to make all participants on board. He needs to communicate meeting agenda and expectations from all participants.
- Set a finish time.
This will force you to get through your agenda within the set time, leaving little room for side tracking. If you announce the length of the meeting and then stick to it, fewer participants will keep looking at their watches, and more participants will take an active role in your meetings.
- Actively manage meeting
Each meeting should have meeting facilitator or coordinator. Big reviews required chairman to facilitate meeting.
Use the agenda to make sure you stay on track. This doesn’t mean you can never discuss something that isn’t on the agenda, but the agenda helps tell you where you should pick back up if you get side-tracked.
If your co-workers propose items that are outside of the scope of your meeting, ask them to send a memo to the other meeting attendees or propose that they schedule a separate (short) meeting with its own agenda
As a meeting coordinator you need to ensure equal representation. Appreciate member as required, Create an open environment. Also give meeting feedback at the end of meeting.
Meeting coordinator is also time keeper. If someone is not allowing others to speak, coordinator to make times off and ensure participation of others.
Also nominate the person, who is going to take all the discussion notes.
- Ensure employee engagement
Meetings are only as good as the ideas that the participants bring forward. Great ideas can come from anyone in an organization, not just its managers.
In meeting, it’s not about who’s the boss. It’s about who’s got the best ideas.”
Many times it happen out of 20, only 4 people are talking and all other are listening, It is very important to include all in meeting Ask question to make others participate in meeting. This shall help in understanding every ones view point and also take their buy-in for decision making. This increases employee morale and ultimately employee engagement.
- Summarize and Record your decisions
Once meeting is over, summaries action points in 5 min and release record notes in next 24 hrs . Record Notes should cover following
- What are the next steps?
- Who is responsible for them?
- What is the timeframe?
- Get meeting feedback
Every meeting has room for improvement. Be sure to solicit feedback from meeting attendees on how the meeting went for them.
Just like anything else, you need to measure the effectiveness of each meeting.
You can use a simple digital form to solicit feedback from participants. You ask participants to rate meeting on scale of 10. This feedback helps in continuous improvement of meeting culture within organization
You need to create a culture in company where meetings are valued and respected.
Here is your bonus tips.
- Try a walking meeting.
Consider having walking meetings rather than sitting down. Walking meetings can be a benefit for participants’ health and may also reduced the time needed.
- Limit the length of the meeting
Meeting duration. – Regular meeting duration shall be from 15 min to 90 min. maximum. Keep meeting as short as possible. Shorter meetings force attendees as well as the meeting organizer to remain on topic and to move swiftly from objective to objective.
- Don’t hold “status update” meetings
Do not use meetings for updates or information dissemination that can be handled by other methods, such as email.
- Consider having a stand-up meeting
Standing up helps to keep attendees active, engaged, and more interactive—and ensures the meeting’s objectives are dealt with more promptly, as distraction and boredom are less likely to interfere. Big names like Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe and Zendesk have already started to incorporate this strategy into their practices and are reaping the benefits.
- Use virtual meeting
Use online meeting tools, MS teams, Skype, Zoom, Google meet, Jio meet and so on. Also it is advisable to turn video on during meeting to stay focused.