Have you ever left a meeting feeling equally or more confused than when it began? If so, you’re not alone.
Consider the following statistics:
• According to a study by Epson and the Centre for Economics and Business Research, office workers spend an average of four hours per week in meetings, more than half of which they feel is wasted time.
• Forty-seven percent of businesspeople surveyed by Salary.com claimed the No. 1 waste of time at the office is “too many meetings.”
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found unnecessary meetings cost U.S. businesses a total of approximately $37 billion each year.
• Forty-five percent of senior executives who responded to an OfficeTeam survey felt employees would be more productive if meetings were banned one day each week.
Too often, meetings are managed poorly or held when unnecessary. What could have been accomplished in one hour instead stretches into three or four hours and leaves attendees exhausted and confused.
One of the most valuable brands in the world, Google is often lauded as the leader in management innovation today. The company operates under the 70-20-10 rule, which suggests employees devote 70 percent of their time to core projects, 20 percent to peripheral but related projects and 10 percent to noncore innovation.
You also can apply this strategy to meetings, such that 70 percent of the meeting is spent discussing core projects, 20 percent discussing growth initiatives and the final 10 percent discussing “wild and crazy” ideas.
In order to develop guidelines for your team, start from the top down. Chart and evaluate how you and your employees spend time and compare the percentage of time spent on various activities to the strategic priorities of those activities. By identifying the disconnect between your company’s time-management practices and strategy, you can determine where changes must be made.
Moving forward, ask the leaders in your company and members of their teams to do this same charting and evaluation. Make them aware of the productivity lost due to poor time management and incentivize them to take charge of their time.
Being mindful of allocating the right amount of time to the right activities consistent with your company’s strategy can have a significant effect on the number and quality of meetings you hold.
Next, circulate the meeting agenda in advance so attendees can review the items to be covered and arrive at the meeting prepared. Ensure everyone – even the most senior people – arrives on time.
Start the meeting with an overall objective and be clear about the time allotted for the entire meeting. Finally, wrap up the meeting promptly and properly, summarizing the next steps that have been agreed upon and who is responsible for each.
Review how the top managers of your company spend their days. Consider the following questions:
• How much time do they spend in meetings, and are those meetings productive?
• Do they leave each meeting with a list of detailed next steps and assigned responsibilities?
• Are they spending time on the right activities?
• Are they allocating time proportionally to your company’s strategic priorities?
• Are they managing their teams efficiently?
• Do they know how to run effective, efficient meetings?
Discuss your findings openly with managers and work together to develop strategies to improve efficiency and time management. Most importantly, make sure you define expectations and standards, so your team doesn’t fall into old habits.
Chris Ciunci is founder and managing partner of TribalVision, which has offices in Warwick, Boston and New York.