To stop wasting time, aim for fit-for-purpose meetings

We lose astounding amounts of precious time on poorly-organized meetings. Poorly-organized meetings take the following shapes:

• No agenda, or vague agenda. Someone usually calls for a meeting to discuss a problem or an idea, but there’s no clear outcome that needs to be achieved by the end of the meeting. Again, when there are no clear metrics, people fall back on visibly obvious proxies of signalling effort or hard work – in this case, just more empty talking and discussion.
• Agenda gets derailed. We lose focus, and we miss the bigger picture. Someone derails the conversation by going into the tactical or minor details that distract everyone else from the fundamental things that need to be solved. Worse, people start talking about what they had for lunch a few hours ago.
• Making people heard rather than solving the problem. In order to look and feel like we are giving everyone a chance to be involved and a chance to speak up, we often go round the table to make sure we include everybody’s views. But this often drags out the meeting for way longer than it’s supposed to take, and negatively reinforces the pain of long meetings in people’s minds.
• There’s no time limit. We mentioned earlier than work just expands to fill the vacuum. So if we don’t set a time limit for our meetings, our discussions will just naturally take hours. There’s no reference point for when to end, so ‘focusing’ or ‘prioritizing’ doesn’t actually mean anything.

If it’s a meeting to solve problems, then solve those problems. If the objective of the meeting is to learn about everybody’s opinions, then this meeting’s agenda should explicitly state that you want everybody to share their views. The main message here is that if we want to keep our meetings productive, we must set clear priorities, and clear timelines. Our meetings must be fit-for-purpose.

Even if we are not the ones leading these meetings, and even if we aren’t senior enough to change the way our companies approach meetings, we can shape it in small ways. Ask how long the meeting will take. Offer to set and communicate the agenda to all attendees. Be an active participant who reigns the group back if they derail. Or even ask ourselves – do we really need to attend this meeting or can we just get stuff done after people are done talking?

If you’re senior enough, experiment with new ways to keep meetings effective – perhaps even change up the physical structure of a meeting room to keep people on their feet. Or incorporate Jeff Bezos’ two-pizza rule to ensure that just the right people for the job are there. Or just ask yourself – could this be an email?

Make your meetings fit-for-purpose so that you’ll free up precious time to do high-quality work. We don’t have to be a slave to meetings.