The tyranny of meetings
Everyone complains about meetings. The sweet spot of communicating just the right amount of information to the right people at the right time in a format that they will understand is a chimera and doesn’t exist. Incomplete or asymmetric information is a fact of life and a design feature or flaw (depending on your point of view) of organizations and bureaucracies everywhere. If complete transparency is one solution, then information overload and loss of competitive advantage would be two side-effects. Trial and error normally lead companies and teams to a cadence of meetings that fulfil their requirements in most situations. When this system fails it can usually be supplemented by emergency meetings and dedicated project teams. All this is to say is that meetings are a feature of work life and are usually necessary. This post is about why meetings often fail to meet their objectives and how we can avoid this. In the spirit of honesty, I have attended and hosted meetings that have not met their objectives and I will almost certainly continue to do so. But the more thought we can put into meetings, the better we can make them over time.
The features of meetings are always the same: purpose, length, frequency, attendees, agenda, time management, venue or platform, decision-making authority, follow-on actions and management follow-up. Even if you get all of this right, it’s likely that not everyone will be happy. Information can quickly change which can invalidate part of the meeting you had or lead you in a different direction to the one discussed. The human condition is such that some people feel they should be in meetings even if the subject matter doesn’t directly concern them and others try to avoid meetings even if their attendance is essential. If you can’t get agreement from everyone in the meeting, who decides the outcome and can you bind attendees effectively to this position? Often the subject of the meeting has contingencies on decisions made elsewhere, so you may be looking for a range of responses rather than a single decision. That said, if you focus on these meeting attributes and do some up-front preparation, the quality and satisfaction with meetings should increase.
A clearly articulated purpose for every meeting is the most important thing to get right. From the purpose will flow many of the answers to the other features listed above. Purpose is usually clearer in ad hoc meetings than in regular meetings. If you can communicate the purpose of the meeting and the requirements of the attendees in advance, then the chances of success are much higher. Stating the purpose of a meeting is obvious, so why do many regular meetings seem to lack purpose? Meetings without purpose are usually easy to spot from the low levels of engagement, and where contributions from the team are getting harder to elicit.
A few years ago, I used to attend a regional exec level meeting that was scheduled weekly for two hours every Wednesday and would often overrun. I was the only attendee based in a different office and would attend by VC. The cameras in the room where everyone else sat were poorly arranged and it was difficult to see the interactions between team members. The sound was ok, but if I needed to speak I would usually need to give a visual cue to ensure I was being heard. When the attendees shared a joke or got excited, started talking over each other, burst into laughter or had side conversations, the sound levels would suddenly jump, and I had to quickly turn my sound down to avoid distortion. All of this was manageable, but the meetings were an exercise in drift. What should have been a tightly controlled decision-making forum and information cascade from the Senior Exec team was a general catch-up with a mixture of business updates from non-attending teams and a round-the-room catch-up from attendees. I would dread these meetings largely because there wasn’t enough change week-to-week to avoid repeating myself. Most of what I heard was not relevant to me and it was an ineffective use of my time. The pandemic was an awful time for most people, but one small benefit was when it forced everyone onto Zoom which allowed me to engage with this meeting more effectively than I could otherwise.
If we had managed to pin down the purpose of this meeting and pushed back on the aspects that should have been redundant (i.e. a general catch-up for the benefit of the senior leader who held separate 1:1s with us all individually), we could have made this meeting more effective in a number of ways. Firstly, the allotted time could be reduced. Most studies suggest that 45 minutes is the longest time we can maintain levels of concentration. If a meeting is really interesting we can all push past this, but I believe there is a deficit that needs to be repaid in future meetings and activities if they are scheduled back-to-back without a break. A two-hour meeting should be broken up into sub-meetings with separate agendas and breaks for it to be effective. It shouldn’t overrun.
Secondly, the frequency needed adjusting. If the meeting requires two hours and has a clearly agreed purpose, then the frequency probably could shift to bi-weekly or monthly. The Senior Exec meeting from which some of the information would cascade was not held on a weekly basis, so aligning our meeting with that meeting would make more sense. I’ve noticed more and more of my meetings are starting on a weekly basis and then shifting to bi-weekly as the need requires. I believe that meetings should be in service of work and not displacing work. As your portfolio increases, you will be required to attend more meetings to enable your team to get timely direction and decisions. I am ok with this tradeoff provided that I am not driving my team into pointless meetings to keep me updated whilst holding them back from delivering on requirements. Allowing the team to have a say in the frequency of meetings can help them balance their work. There is also the flexibility to receive updates via other means such as email.
Time management can be essential. I am ok with meetings with a standing agenda or informal agenda that run without time management, in the knowledge that there is a risk that not everything is covered. Provided we cover off the priority issues first then the meeting will naturally find its rhythm. But meetings called to cover specific topics where there are a few decision points and senior attendees need formal time management against a realistic agenda. I have been in plenty of situations recently where various diary constraints have resulted in a 30 minute slot, an unrealistic amount to cover and the first five minutes wasted on waiting for people to join. These situations rarely achieve their outcomes and time management curtails the quality of the discussion and the decisions that need to be made. One solution is a series of pre-meetings with smaller groups and offline discussions to cover off some of the ground in the run-up to the meeting to reduce the agenda for the main meeting. The other solution is a degree of honesty about how much time is required.
The venue or platform has become a lesser consideration post-covid. Most people are now comfortable with using VC software, even if they occasionally forget to unmute. In the example I gave earlier, my challenge was being the only virtual attendee. This scenario has become less common in my experience and most meetings are now a hybrid of online and in-person. Its now the case that people in the room can be at a disadvantage as joining via your computer allows you to clearly see all the information presented. Provided there is time to meet your colleagues in person and to reinforce the levels of trust and connection that helps make business more effective and enjoyable, then the consideration of platform or venue is one that is much less important than it once was for internal meetings. If you are meeting with a client and involved in a negotiation, this consideration is still vitally important.
The last four: leadership, decision-making authority, follow-on actions and scheduled follow-up can all be considered together. It’s very easy to tell an effective meeting from an ineffective meeting; the effective meeting will finish with an agreed list of decisions and actions. To get to this point each meeting needs leadership. Leadership does not need to come from the most senior attendee. The person best placed to show leadership is the person who called the meeting or has the most to gain from the meeting. If you have gone to the effort to arrange a meeting with a range of stakeholders and you sit quietly and fail to get the information you need, then that is a missed opportunity. The same can be said if you need a meeting to discuss a certain issue and allow it to get derailed by someone wanting to cover another issue. In negotiations I will usually defer leadership to another member of the team so I can be fully present. I want to listen and respond to what is happening in the room without having to take notes and collate decisions and actions. At the end of the meeting, I will defer to the person who I trust to lead the meeting to summarize our understanding and to ensure that both parties are in agreement. Follow-up is about planning when to reconvene and this helpfully gives a timeframe to the outstanding actions.
As I said at the beginning, I will continue to attend and host meetings that could be much more efficient. Sometimes this won’t matter as if they are regular and informal, and attendees understand the importance of prioritizing urgent issues. The commitment I want to make is to continue to speak-up in meetings that aren’t functioning well, clarify the purpose of the meeting, offer to set the agenda and confirm the action points and decisions at the end. If all we do is complain about meetings we don’t like, then nothing is likely to change.
Next week’s blog is on how I de-stress. This is a companion piece to my earlier post on work-related stress. This time I want to focus on basic habits and routines that I find keep me balanced and grounded.